Ocak tradition of public medicine in Ankara province Bala district

Health has been at the forefront of the survival of humanity since living in a community. People who are desperate against the diseases, have made medicines with the elements obtained from various plant, animal or mineral materials in the nature they live in. Man, who somehow found a way to survive through trial and error, created rituals and practices based on belief as well as obtaining natural products from the elements of nature. Therefore, human beings have gained knowledge and experience with this situation. Religion and belief were combined with materials obtained from nature, and various diseases were tried to be treated directly rather than diagnosed. All of the methods and practices based on the treatment of people are believed to have religious-magical powers at the beginning and they have been classified with folk medicine practices in today's folklore studies. This study has been put forward in line with certain purposes.The first one is to identify and record the tradition of folk medicine which is called Ocak tradition and its practises in Bala. Besides this, another aim is to explain the tradition of Ocak with the basic codes in the old Turkish belief system. The study was constructed with a method based on the comparison of the data obtained from the field research with the data collected from other regions in different times. The first two parts of the study are on the basic concepts of folk medicine and the old Turkish belief system. The last part includes the transfer and interpretation of the data compiled from the field.