Medicine vs. Alternative Therapies

Medicine in many Native American families means self-knowledge.  The medicine people of the tribes were spiritual, but also herbalists who knew every aspect

 and purpose of God’s weeds and plants. Great importance was attached to the Human connection to Earth, to nature, and to the Creator, and though anatomy was not a required course, medicine people intuitively and instinctively knew which herbs or plants affected which areas of the body and how that part of the body was supposed to work.  They watched animals and plant life, the seasons, stars, and the moon and learned about cycles of change, digestion, blood circulation, life and death. By observing each other and the animals around them, they learned behaviors and personalities and attached names to their children based on their individual attributes. They understood the seasons and sat in medicine wheels that allowed the four directions of North, East, South and West to help guide them on their given paths.

            Colors were given special meanings and their vibrations were felt through the senses of touch, vision and scent. Vegetables were given the highest honor by being called sisters of sustenance.  Corn, beans and squash were family members devoted to cleansing and nourishing the body.

            Water was medicine and they knew the water within their bodies needed to be clean.  Sweat lodges to release impurities from the body, preceded by fasting and followed by a plunge in the river, were sacred healing rituals that ensured strength and long life.

            European doctors, mostly from France, Italy and Germany, and the Arab physicians from Egypt practiced and tried to perfect surgical techniques and the science of discovery through analysis. The Greeks, of course, were considered the originators of medicine with people like Hippocrates and Galen, but they were replacements for the first healers, mostly women, who were naturalists and herbalists, astrologers and aromatherapists. These early practitioners were later labeled occultists and the churches of Italy put a stop to their practices.  The monks became the keepers of the herbs, the original pharmacists, and any writings on alternative therapies were destroyed or hidden. These alternatives, as they are labeled today, were actually the mainstream of medicine, and many a prominent physician studied diet, nutrition and herbs before concentrating or specializing in a more accepted field. 

Churches were the first hospitals for people who couldn’t afford a personal physician or for needy travelers, and Priests were considered doctors. They often tended to royalty or the ruling class until they were stopped from performing surgery by practicing surgeons. Eventually they concentrated more on religious medicine and remain the self-proclaimed authorities on spirit.

            Inventions like the microscope furthered research into the microorganisms of the body, and much later led to inoculations for typhoid, smallpox and later polio, to name a few.  Of course, these discoveries were important in understanding the body’s defenses, but unfortunately, the science of medicine became more science than practice and the patients became secondary to research.

            Alternative therapies took a back seat, but often were exactly as they were labeled- an alternative to the medicate or operate theories.  More and more people today are turning to these therapies for pain management, stress reduction, and anything else the medical establishment doesn’t, can’t or won’t provide