[MPWG] How rainforest shamans treat disease

[emanuela at medicaltraditions.org]

APOLOGIES FOR CROSS-POSTINGS

Thought you would be interested in the following article.

Thanks and best wishes,

Emanuela Appetiti, CEO
Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions
http://medicaltraditions.org

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Excerpt below
 for the whole story and interview:
http://news.mongabay.com/2009/1110-herndon_amazon_shaman.html

How rainforest shamans treat disease
Rhett A. Butler, mongabay.com
November 10, 2009

 Physician Christopher Herndon explores how Amazon shamans diagnose and
treat disease.

Ethnobotanists, people who study the relationship between plants and
people, have long documented the extensive use of medicinal plants by
indigenous shamans in places around the world, including the Amazon. But
few have reported on the actual process by which traditional healers
diagnose and treat disease.

A new paper, published in the Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine,
moves beyond the cataloging of plant use to examine the diseases and
conditions treated in two indigenous villages deep in the rainforests of
Suriname. The research, which based on data on more than 20,000 patient
visits to traditional clinics over a four-year period, finds that shamans
in the Trio tribe have a complex understanding of disease concepts, one
that is comparable to Western medical science. Trio medicine men recognize
at least 75 distinct disease conditions—ranging from common ailments like
fever [këike] to specific and rare medical conditions like Bell's palsy
[ehpijanejan] and distinguish between old (endemic) and new (introduced
since contact with the outside world) illnesses.

The knowledge and treatments of shamans is the product of their own
scientific method, accumulated from a progressive cycle of trial,
experiment and observation repeated over countless generations. It may not
be transmitted in Science or Nature but in many ways is fundamentally
based on the very same empirical and pragmatic principles as Western
science.

Lead author Christopher Herndon, currently a reproductive medicine
physician at the University of California, San Francisco, says the
findings are a testament to the under-appreciated healing prowess of
indigenous shamans....