Saatekirjaga rahvaarsti juures

The article discusses one of the healing strategies used by Laine Roht, a well-known folk healer from southern Estonia, in the 1980s; namely, she demanded that the patients turning to her bring a referral letter from their doctor. This kind of behaviour was a response to the state’s prohibition of folk medicine methods, and aimed to promote the image that the healer worked in cooperation with professional physicians. These referral letters from medical doctors as well as other written documentation concerned with healing constitute interesting folkloric and psychological research material. The article gives an overview of the healing rituals applied to the patients, diagnoses with which they turned to the healer, the origin of both doctors and patients, and the role of printed materials in the 20th-century healer’s tradition and her healing ritual. The author also characterises contemporary media images of healers and the role of the media as basis for the healer’s fame.