Monga Bay - In one of the great tragedies of our age, indigenous traditions, stories, cultures and knowledge are winking out across the world. Whole languages and mythologies are vanishing, and in some cases even entire indigenous groups are falling into extinction. This is what makes the news that a tribe in the Amazon—the Matsés peoples of Brazil and Peru—have created a 500-page encyclopedia of their traditional medicine all the more remarkable. The encyclopedia, compiled by five shamans with assistance from conservation group Acaté, details every plant used by Matsés medicine to cure a massive variety of ailments.
"The [Matsés Traditional Medicine Encyclopedia] marks the first time shamans of an Amazonian tribe have created a full and complete transcription of their medicinal knowledge written in their own language and words," Christopher Herndon, president and co-founder of Acaté, told Mongabay in an interview.
The Matsés have only printed their encyclopedia in their native language to ensure that the medicinal knowledge is not stolen by corporations or researchers as has happened in the past. Instead, the encyclopedia is meant as a guide for training new, young shamans in the tradition and recording the living shamans' knowledge before they pass.
3 comments:
The medical professions, or at least their associations, have a lot to answer for. I once heard a smooth talking idiot physician decrying a folk remedy as "homeopathic medicine". He appeared to not know the difference between tradition, which is based on some measure of anecdotal evidence, and magic, which is based on deception. Homeopathic medicine is witchcraft pure and simple. There is such a thing as confusion between the two, as with mandrake root or ginseng, but the distinction is still clear. My HMO has some small resources devoted to "alternative" medicine. Of course the only alternatives are good and bad, and it is incumbent on the profession to determine the value of each alternative and apply or condemn each appropriately. I'm waiting.
Gee Capt. America, it's so great that you are an expert on everything. I wish I could live in a world of such certainty. It's nice to know that "Homeopathic medicine is witchcraft pure and simple." Have you ever used homeopathy? Have you ever used homeopathy with the guidance of a knowledgable homeopath? Or have you only read a couple of articles on the junk website "Quackwatch"and made up your mind from there. Read up on Stephan Barrett before you believe anything he writes.
http://www.quackpotwatch.org/quackpots/quackpots/barrett.htm
It doesn't matter that in many cases, Homeopathy works better than allopathic medicines. I turned to Homeopathy because Allopathic medicine had repeatedly damaged my health and utterly failed me. I became a first aid lay homeopathy because of how effective it is. I've given remedies to pre verbal children, and adult skeptics who were certain I was just giving them useless sugar pills, and both the babies and the skeptics have had strong improvements in their conditions within 15 minutes.
EVEN if homeopathy only works by placebo effect, a $7.50 tube of remedy that triggers a consistent placebo effect repeatedly, up to 40 times per package without negative side effects, seems a good value. If using homeopathy doesn't work, there is no reason you can't risk seeing a doctor and hope they won't give you a medication that will damage your health for years. Still I wonder, how you get placebo effect with a preverbal child, when just casually giving the remedy, and avoiding giving cues that say the adults expect an improvement, but I don't rule it out.
Of course there are times that allopathic medicine is a better choice. Don't try to fix a compound fracture with Arnica 30C alone, the hospital is where that fracture needs to go. There are plenty of cases where people have let disease develop so long that heroic measures are the only option. Yet, in many cases allopathic medicine is overkill and the meds do more harm then good. If you look at death statistics, allopathic medicine has a lot to answer for. The few deaths attributed to homeopathy come from doing way too little, way too late.
Many medicines came from plants originally.
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