William George Black, “Neomagus,” and Folk-Medicine (1876)

Abstract

This article examines William George Black’s coinage of the term ‘folk medicine’, under the pseudonym ‘Neomagus’, in the Journal of the British Archaeological Association of 1878. This was prior to the publication of his seminar Folk Medicine in 1882, almost forty years after Thom’s coinage of the term ‘folk lore’. As Secretary of South Scotland for the Folk-Lore Society of London, Black – who published his seminal Folk Medicine in 1882 – played a key role in the development of the discipline. This article explores the wide-ranging influences, and probable German origins of this central term, of his ground-breaking work in defining folk medicine.