What is folk medicine or traditional healing?
Folk medicine is the use of non-biomedical healing approaches to treat illness. All people practice folk medicine when they take vitamins to prevent a cold or drink herbal tea for a stomach ache. In every culture, people practice what their healing system prescribes. Some anthropologists would say that we are all folks who heal when utilizing whatever means one knows to cure sickness — taking aspirin for headaches or going to the doctor for check-ups. Although people have a tendency to romanticize the "folk" and think of their healing treatments as quaint and in the past, few modern Americans would deny that they pray for critically sick loved ones with an expectation that some Force will heal them or that they do not espouse some non-biomedical approaches to healing. On this basic level, we can all relate to the human conditions of sickness and health.

In a model by Arthur Kleinman, he argues that it is important to recognize other sectors of health care and compares medical systems as cultural systems. For Kleinman, every health-care system involves three clinical realities: the professional sector — Western medicine and professionalized indigenous health-care systems; the popular sector — the familial, communal and societal context of illness and health; and the folk sector — non-professional healing specialists like traiteurs. Each sector is an arena in which cultural beliefs, roles, relationships, settings and institutions interact and, often, overlap to give meaning to and heal illness (Kleinman, 1991).

How did the traiteur system of healing become a "tradition"?
How does one become a traiteur?
What defines a traiteur?
From colonial times until to this present day, the traiteur tradition of Southern Louisiana has developed through the exchange and adoption of the herbal, faith and magical traditional healing practices of the Cajun/European-American, Houma/Native-American and Creole/African-American. Today, it continues to evolve. For instance, many traiteurs treat over the phone, both for convenience and, since many are elderly and live alone, for reasons of safety.

This tradition is distinct from the religion and practices often labeled "voodoo," although it does retain many aspects of Afro-Caribbean approaches to religion and healing. It is a rural tradition whose practitioners live on the bayous, marshes and prairies of Southern Louisiana. Until the 1940s, either there were not enough medical doctors in this somewhat isolated area, or the people were unable to afford their services. As in many rural parts of the country, these traditional healers have evolved from being the primary care-givers of the region to their current service as a supplementary system of health care and religious healing. Today, it is increasingly viewed as old-fashioned and out-dated because of institutionalized medicine and pervasive societal beliefs about the "superstitiousness" of the treatments.

Because it involves the oral transmission of knowledge and power — from either relatives, other adults or sometimes directly "from the Spirit" — there is no institutionalized training nor board examinations for a treater to pass. Consequently, the tradition is idiosyncratic and based in each practitioner's regional, ethnic and, often, familial context. In some cases, the "gift" is passed down in families. Both sides of Shannon's family tree are peopled with traiteurs, with at least seven known relatives who have treated — including her father, maternal grandfather and paternal great uncle (who directly passed on his gift to her), all living. The passage of the gift from one individual to another also sometimes occurs between ethnic groups. With so much variation in the transmission and the kind of gift given, there exist no sharp, demarcating lines by which to define what is a traiteur.

One of traiteur's most striking aspects is this great variability. The practitioners differ in their religion (most are Catholic yet some are Protestant), their ritual styles, and their individual conceptions of the "rules" for the transference of the gift and for the actual practice of treating. Many are lower-middle class to middle class people, and most who practice regularly are elderly because of their greater availability of time and because of the skepticism and lack of investment in the tradition by the young. Treaters are either generalists (like Lawrence and Miss Ella) who treat for almost any ailment or specialists (like Shannon) who treat for as little as one to as many as forty or more specific ailments. Most treaters have other jobs and responsibilities and treat only occasionally. A few, especially those in more marginal positions like Lawrence and Miss Ella, treat every day.