PrintLeeches. Vodka. Honey. Steam baths. A recipe for the most disgusting orgy man can dream up or a pathway to clean health? In Russia, definitely the latter.
Traditional healing methods are wildly popular in Russia – not as a revival hippie thing, like in the US, but as a foundation of what passes for health care here. It’s one of the starkest reminders that the blitzkrieg modernization forced upon the country by the Soviets didn’t always take hold.
Today, Voice of America runs a fun feature on the Russian love of faith healing (it ran previously on PRI’s The World). It cites a Russian study that found only 44 percent of Russians went to the doctor in 2010. Many prefer alternative healers – according to government statistics cited in the story, Russia has 800,000 of them, more than the number of officially registered doctors.
You can read the whole story here.
I still can’t get over the leeches thing. Yesterday, the BBC ran this report about leech use in Georgia (the ex-Soviet one). Earlier, MSNBC’s Yonatan Pomrenze was brave enough to try it himself:
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http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/bric-yard/russian-medicine-leeches-vodka-faith-oh-my
