Folk medicine

“ In our researches to discover and fix the period when remedies were 53first employed for the alleviation of bodily suffering, we are soon lost in conjecture, or involved in fable; we are unable to reach the period in any country, when the inhabitants were destitute of medical resources, and we find among the most uncultivated tribes, that medicine is cherished as a blessing, and practised as an art, as by the inhabitants of New Holland and New Zealand, by those of Lapland and Greenland, of North America and the interior of Africa. ”

“ Native doctors and nurses to care for current illnesses and educate their people in the prevention of disease, especially in soil sanitation and pure water supplies; attention to infant and child welfare; reliable census-taking to check results—all under the supervision of competent European physicians and nurses. Add to this a careful study of native customs on the part of civil administrations, so [Pg 382] that they may learn respect for the more wholesome of the folk ways that have given life’s zest to the people. ”

“ In every Indian village along the whole140 route it was disheartening to see so many of the people sick and without any means of getting medical treatment, but this encampment was perhaps the worst of any in this respect, and the appeals for medicine were most urgent. They know nothing as to what remedies should be taken for any specific ailment, but think that any kind of medicine should cure any disease in the calendar. ”

“ The story of this movement is not only interesting because it represents a coordination of social effort for the relief of suffering humanity, but also because it represents the provision of opportunities for the study of disease and the skilled care of the ailing such as can come in no other way. Those who are familiar with the history of medicine, and especially of surgery, know that a great period of progress in these departments came during the thirteenth century. ”

“ It is much more than that to an Indian. The term “medicine,” as current among the natives through the continent, in its equivalents in all their languages and dialects, carries with it all the associations which the word has for civilized people, and far more mysterious ones beside. The treatment of disease by the conjurers, jongleurs, or “pow-wows” among the natives, as has been before noted, is believed to be more or less of a magical art. So, every process and means connected with it is associated for the Indian with some quality of mystery and charm. ”

“ For them a little glance at even a few of the realities of medical teaching in the thirteenth century will show at once what a castle of the imagination they have been living in.
Only those who are thoroughly and completely ignorant of the real status of medical teaching in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries continue to hold these absurd opinions as to the nullity of medieval medicine and surgery. ”

“ From observation and experience I make the assertion that nine of every ten Indian outbreaks are fomented by the "Medicine" men. These men are at the same time both priest and doctor. They not only ward off the "bad spirits," and cure the sick, but they forecast events. ”

“ And the importance of understanding the true conditions of health and disease—of knowing how to acquire and preserve that healthy habit of body which the most tedious and costly medical treatment so often fails to restore when once lost, should secure a place in general education for the principal maxims of hygiene, and some of those even of practical medicine. For those who aim at high intellectual cultivation, the study of physiology has still greater recommendations, and is, in the present state of advancement of the higher studies, a real necessity. ”

“ None of the learned professions have advanced during the last thirty years so much as the medical. Medicine has become a new science since it has taken hold of the sanitary improvement of our towns and dwellings. ”

“ As we have said before, during the dark ages medical knowledge was confined to the clergy, and the same individuals officiated both as priests and physicians. But at length medicine became a separate profession, and the treatment of physical diseases was assigned to one class of men, and the care of moral and religious matters to another. ”

“ The European renegades in the service are very little better, with a few exceptions. The monks that practise medicine as a profession have a very fair knowledge of simples, and compound their own medicines, and employ a good many recent chemicals and modern ingredients in the European Materia Medica; but their knowledge of acute disease is necessarily limited.”
The natives, in the hour of sickness, have first of all recourse to simple herbal remedies, which have been handed down through many generations, and are chiefly held in estimation by the old people of the villages. ”

“ A witch doctor, who lived near us and who had much light, exclaimed one day, "I can give medicine, and if the Lord says the sick will recover, he will recover; if He says the sick one will die, he will die; my medicine cannot save him."
When one treats a native in his home for any disease, it is always difficult to induce his people to follow the prescribed treatment; for they desire often to use their arts as well. ”

“ Mohideen Sheriff we have lost an experienced student of Medicine who did good work in bringing to light what was worthy of record in the indigenous systems of Medicine and in helping his coreligionists to understand that modern scientific Medicine is the true development of that art of healing, which their forefathers have the undying honour of having been the first to cultivate ”

“ Sanitary science, though in its infancy, has already profoundly affected medical science in many directions. Perhaps the most important effect that as yet appears is the leading medicine away from its old, blind, absolute faith in remedial agents, in therapeutics, toward greater faith in right living, proper diet, dress, and drainage. ”

“ In the most highly civilized countries the advance of scientific surgery and discoveries in medicine are hailed with the greatest applause. In such countries the subjects of sanitation and hygiene are given the closest attention, not only by students and scientists, but by every thoughtful individual. It is being recognized that there is no great and impressive mystery about our physical natures by virtue of which we escape responsibility for guarding our own health in every reasonable way. ”

“ In the resources of medicine and scientific surgery the ancients were far behind even the half-civilized nations of modern times, but their children could enjoy their holidays on their own playground, their sleepers could breathe pure air, their worn-out laborers could retire to the peace of a private home; and they enjoyed a degree of health and vigor which our most progressive nations can hope to re-attain only after centuries of sanitary reform. ”

“ Should she, out of respect to the resident physicians, decline to practise medicine, still she will have a noble function in the prevention of disease and physical deterioration, and in the assisting of physical development. ”

“ PRIMITIVE MEDICINE.
Bleeding.—Scarification.—Use of Medicinal Herbs amongst the Aborigines of Australia, South America, Africa, etc.
The Healing Craft of many of the northern tribes of Australia is thus described by Mr. Palmer:—
“Among the northern tribes many devices and charms are resorted to in the cases of pains and sickness. The doctors are men who, it is supposed, possess great powers of healing, some of which they obtain from the spirits. ”

“ Between medicine and the ministry he hesitated, but only to weigh in his mind which of the two professions would be the one in which he could render the greatest good to his native land. Of the need of medicine there could be no doubt; even a young man could perceive the advantage of modern medical science for a land where ignorance of the body and superstition were the allies to cause suffering, contagion and pestilence. ”

“ The importance of teaching the social worker all that is known about the transmission and causation of disease is due to the following fact: whatever we [Pg 22] succeed in accomplishing in our efforts at preventive medicine, whatever we do to nip disease in the bud or to check the spread of epidemics, is due to our knowledge of the causes of disease. ”

“ Then, when favorable conditions had developed again, Christian schools and scholars gave it the opportunity to burn brightly for several centuries at the end of the Middle Ages. This medieval age is probably the most difficult period of medical history to understand properly, but it is worth while taking the trouble to follow out the thread of medical tradition from the Greeks to the Renaissance medical writers, who practically begin modern medicine for us. ”

“ The teaching of medicine should be much more largely physiological and hygienic than at present, and such subjects as food values, the hygiene of infancy and childbirth, the physiology of breast feeding, and the influence of environment on the health of their future patients should be the subject of careful [Pg 100] training—especially in regard to housing, feeding, clothing, and conditions of work. ”

“ In Asia Minor, where Greek influence persisted as it did not in Italy, we have a series of distinguished contributors to medicine, or rather, medical literature—that is, men whose books represent a valuable compilation and digestion of the important medical writings from before their time, often [Pg 4] enriched by their own experience. ”

“ The newspapers carried many such announcements from retired clergymen, old nurses, or Indian doctors, frequently persons who had themselves triumphed over dread diseases and had discovered the best remedies only after years of search and suffering, always offering to communicate the secret of recovery to any fellow sufferer. ”

“ From Neuburger.—Equally crude are their ideas respecting the causes of disease, as shown by the following items selected from quite a long list of etiological factors: errors in diet and in the habits of life, climatic influences, psychic factors, heredity, poison, supernatural influences like the anger of the gods, the evil powers of demons, etc. For purposes of diagnosis the earlier Indian physicians utilized not only inspection, palpation and auscultation, but also the senses of taste and smell. ”

“ Medicine also has its eminent representatives, who not only give splendour to the medical faculty of the University, but also exercise a most beneficial influence on the reform of the town's sanitary arrangements. ”

“ The accommodation of remedies to the changes which are induced in diseases by the late revolutions in our climate, seasons, and manners, has had a sensible influence in improving the practice of medicine in our city. The same diseases, like the descendants of the same families, lose their resemblance to each other by the lapse of time ”

“ As is the style, so is the thinking out of the problems before him. Starting from hygiene as the proper basis of medicine, he thinks those should be regarded as the earliest physicians who improved the food of primitive men by crushing grain, by cooking meat, and by selecting edible vegetables. From that time onward, there was growing up an experience of what was healthy and what the reverse. It is this experience which he seeks to systematise by careful observation and so to establish laws of hygiene, and the probable natural prophylactics or remedies afforded by air, water, and climate. ”

“ The doctor's duty in a fever-stricken village is not merely to cure disease in a stricken patient. He has a higher duty yet which will bring no pecuniary reward, to prevent the healthy from being stricken, to seek out, to remove or to eradi- cate the causes of disease, and take as much or greater pride in the continued health and good sanitary condition of his station or village as in the number of his cures. ”

“ But as the legitimate province of medicine 285is to amuse the patient, while nature cures the disease, perhaps the result of their practice will not suffer by a comparison with that of their more learned brethren. ”

“ A new and in many respects a nobler conception of medicine has been developed. Formerly medical practice was almost exclusively a personal service to the sick individual, and measures looking toward the general relief of disease and its prevention received scanty consideration. The idea of a wider service to the city, to the state, to the nation, to humanity rather than the personal service to the individual, is becoming dominant in medicine. ”

“ Another fact deserves to be placed by the side of this; viz., that in those countries, or portions of country, where no physicians have ever been in vogue, and very little medicine beyond a few herbs, and roots, and incantations, or charms, the health of the people is quite as good, and the longevity quite as great, all other things being equal, as in those countries and places where physicians and medicine have obtained a strong foothold. ”

“ Another point might then also have become clear: the whole tendency of medicine is towards a recognition of the predominance of Hygiene. The modern aim is to prevent disease. The whole national system of medicine is being slowly though steadily built up in recognition of the great fact that the interests of Health come before the interests of Disease. ”

“ Let them serve with sincere study to help those who are ailing as becomes their knowledge of medicine, and let them look for their reward from Him who can compensate temporal work by eternal wages. Learn, therefore, the nature of herbs, and study diligently the way to combine their various species for human health; but do not place your entire hope on herbs, nor seek to restore health only by human counsels. Since medicine has been created by God, and since it is He who gives back health and restores life, turn to Him. ”