Oh look:
Moderately complex medical conditions, however, did involve TIM in most instances. Examples of these conditions were childbirth, infant care, contraception, abortion, menstrual problems, complex fractures, arrow wounds, snakebites, frostbite, urethritis, UTI's, rheumatism, degenerative arthritis, asthma, worm infestation, diet/nutrition disorders, migraine headaches, abscesses/boils, second degree burns, hemorrhages, and venereal disease to name a few.
(TIM + traditional Indian medicine.)
staff.washington.edu
That is really a fascinating link. The Indians did have very good health in general, before contact with the Europeans. Here's another excerpt:
Wood also wrote the most of them reached fifty before “a wrinkled brow or gray hair betray their age,”...”they are not brought down with supressing labour, vexed with annoying cares, or drowned in the excessive abuse of overflowing plenty.” Wood was impressed that the Indians did not suffer from the common European maladies of the time;
...those health wasting diseases which are incident to other countries, as fevers, pleurisies, callentures, agues, obstructions,
consumptions, subfumigations, convulsions, apoplexies, gouts,
stones, toothaches, pox, measles, or the like; but spin out the
thread of their days to a fair length, numbering threescore,
fourscore, some a hundred years, before the worlds universal
summoner cite them to the craving grave (5).
Another New Englander, John Josselyn wrote the following; the Boston area Indians are “tall and handsome timber’d people,” who “live long, even to a hundred years of age, if they be not cut off by plague” (6). He also noted that “there are not so many diseases raigning amongst them as our Europeans.”
The Dutch commented on the Indians of New York in 1624; “it is somewhat strange that among these most barbarous people, there are few or none cross-eyed, blind, crippled, lame, hunch-backed, or limping men; all are well fashioned people, strong and sound of body, well fed, without blemish” (7).
A French Canadian, the Baron de Lahontan wrote the following; “the Savages are a robust and vigorous sort of People, of a Sanguine Temperament, and an admirable Complexion” (8). They were “unacquainted with a great many Diseases that afflict the Europeans such as the Gout, Gravel, Dropsy, and their health is firm, notwithstanding that they use no precaution to preserve it”.
An evangelist, John Wesly from Georgia wrote a medical book Primitive Physic in 1747. In it he praised the rugged health of the Indian and their Traditional Indian Medicine. His book quotes the following:
that this is the method wherein the art of healing is preserved
among the Americans (Indians) to this day. Their diseases,
indeed, are exceedingly few; nor do they often occur, by reason of their continual exercise, and (till of late, universal) tem-perance. But if any are sick, or bit by a serpent, or torn by a
wild beast, the fathers immediately tell their children what remedy to apply. And it is rare that the patient suffers long;
those medicines being quick, as well as generally infallible (9). |
