[Personification of disease in folk culture]

Images of the disease established in the folk culture resulted from the efforts to overcome the fear they induced. One can distinguish two types of personification: one connected with the disease itself, and the other - with its causes. A disease was treated in an anthropomorphic way, with certain features of character attributed to it. It was spoken to with reverence in order to avoid hurting its feelings and making it attack a person. Numerous folk images of a disease found their way to the Romantic and Positivistic literature. Many of them took the shape of a woman.