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As non-canonical texts, apocryphal prayers had been exposed to various influences, and thus became the most comprehensive written records of the interaction between medical knowledge on one hand, and folk and religious medicine on the other hand. This paper examines apocryphal prayers used to heal illnesses and acute conditions. By analyzing the selected examples of apocryphal prayers, such as against nežit (various inflammatory conditions thought to be caused by an evil spirit of this name), against toothache, against nosebleed, against snake bites, against bites by rabid dogs or wolves, the paper determines their characteristics. On one hand, the paper identifies medical knowledge appearing in the prayers and delineates ways in which the cause of an illness and the proper course of treatment are determined. On the other hand, apocryphal prayers are examined within a framework used for literary text analysis, which results in a consideration of their stylistic values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In our postmodern, virtual, age, it is perhaps snot too bold to state that literature remains the last sanctuary of human meaning. The overall symbolical, religious, and cultural capital of contemporary civilizations undergoes the process of devaluation, whereby literature, although set aside on the margins of media and culture, remains to represent an opportunity to be humane. Therefore, it is in literature that we are to find the archetypal hidden figures of God, as well as the archetypal figures of the concealed cure for a depersonalized man. Sick with civilizational processes and virtual realities, man cannot be cured of his disease (the disease of existence) only by means of specialized medical treatment, but also by means of making sense of his existence within the universe. By repeating, but also disintegrating from their very onset, the conventions and stereotypes of social control, as well as socially and scientifically established and thus guaranteed "health" and "knowledge" (as one of the ultimate misconceptions of historical emancipation), we can perceive literature as the last anamnesis of our diseases and as the last pledge for a more comprehensive recovery of the Western man. Literature makes the diagnosis that man is "fatally ill", which is also the Biblical diagnosis and the diagnosis of church tradition. Yet, as is the case with every poison and remedy, literature also holds the cure. In opposition to Frankl's concept of logo therapy, this paper is focused on the (logo)therapy prescribed by literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]