root doctors
Traditional medicine practitioners
Root doctors are folk healers in African American tradition, particularly in the Southern United States, who use herbs, roots, and spiritual practices to treat ailments, remove curses, or bring good fortune.
The practice blends African spiritual traditions with Native American herbalism and elements of Christianity.
Root doctors may also be called conjurers or hoodoo practitioners, and their work straddles the line between herbal medicine and supernatural intervention.
She visited a root doctor to get a charm for protection.
- spellsMagical utterances or intervals
- botanicalsPlant-based ingredients
- remediesTreatments that restore health
- charmsAttracts or delights
- conjureSummon by supernatural means
conjure woman · healers · medicine man · curandero · herbalism · rootwork · poultices · laying on of hands · hoodoo · folk medicine · incantations · ancestor worship · plant medicine · graveyard dirt · divination · spiritual healing · tonics · sacred plants
- Gullah GeecheeGullah, St. Helena Island, Hilton Head, Beaufort, sweetgrass
- Southern folklorehaint, conjure, conjure woman, bloody bones, booger
- bush medicinebush medicine, herbal medicine, folk remedies, healing herbs, traditional healers
- herbalists
- healersnurse, physician, surgeon, medic, healer
- ethnobotanyayahuasca, peyote, coca, coca leaf, cannabis
root doctorsmedical doctors
Licensed practitioners of medicine
MDs · surgeons · specialists · attending physicians · general practitioners
root, roots, rooted, rooting, rootless, doctor, doctors, doctored, doctoring