CURANDEIRISMO NA FRONTEIRA ENTRE MATO GROSSO E O PARAGUAI: 1882-1943
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22456/1982-6524.134491Abstract
This paper deals with Natural Healing, that cultural practice was important on the border between Mato Grosso and Paraguay until the early 1940s. The aim of this paper was bound so as to focus on the analysis of Nha Chalo's practices. She was maybe the most emblematic character among the frontier healers. The gathering of empirical data was restrained to Hélio Serejo's tales (1912 - 2007) which are available in the following books: 'Carai Ervateiro' and 'Nha Chalo'. Witchcraft fits into empirical medicine, which used herbal resources through teas, bottles, poultices, ointments, purgatives, emetics, in addition to resources such as bloodletting, diets with special foods. It was possible to verify that the procedures adopted by Nha Chalo weren't discretionary or inconsequential. They were rather based on practical knowledge, systematized along centuries and passed along from generation to generation, especially among natives of the ' Guarani ' ethnic group. That knowledge relied on good sense, taken in the gramscian sense and the very screening of scientific knowledge, currently available, shows its efficacy through scientific corroboration, displayed as based on scientific evidence.
Keywords: Guarani Ethnic; Cultural Practices; Rustic Medicine; Medicinal Plants.
