People's efforts to find cures to various diseases represent the basis of folk medicine, and as a result, they became a part of the folk culture. This paper points out the attitude of the Croatian people towards health as well as different ways of treating diseases in Croatian history. In addition, this paper also shows how practitioners of folk medicine used various techniques in treatment such as barber-surgery, bone resetting, dowsing and surgery. Various herbal, animal and mineral components have been used for the purpose of protection against disease, and practitioners have often resorted to magical and religious methods in their treatment. Their knowledge was the result of many successful as well as failed treatments, and it was passed on from generation to generation. With the emergence of literacy, knowledge and experience in treating illnesses was steadily being recorded in folk medicine manuals, i.e., collections of recipes for the production of remedies and their application. Folk medicine manuals were written in the places where Croats lived from the 14th to the 20th century, and the most preserved ones date back to the 17th and 18th century. These are mostly Cyrillic manuscripts written by Franciscan friars in the Dalmatian area where herbal remedies were most commonly used. Since many remedies in folk medicine are still being used today, it was concluded that folk medicine will not disappear because of its centuries-old tradition and that it, as such, represents an important part of the cultural history of the Croatian people.