The magical power of the word in Russian folk medicine the treatment of eye diseases

The aim of the present article is to describe the folk etiology of eye diseases as well as a presentation of the verbal methods found in Russian folk culture for its cure. The research material encompasses collections of Russian folk spells together with ethnographical works on Slavonic folk medicine. The researched material showed that within the magical formulas utilised in the case of eye diseases (inflammation, sties etc.) various verbal strategies were employed; for example ones causing the driving away or destruction of the disease, requests to intermediaries as well as other approaches.