Creativity in illness: Methodological linkages to the logic and language of science in folk pursuit of health in central Italy

Field research in a rural section of central Italy provides the basis for this paper on the structuring of information about health and illness. Here a population is presently engaged in creating a grammar and rhetoric of health culture and life style that begins to link its own traditions to what it learns of medical scientific method, both in praxis and from media fare on the 'discourse' of medical science. We follow this thought modality in exploration of therapeutic choices and the evolving of ethnotherapies.