Folk Medicine - The Natural Solution
Eric Cho
Long before orthodox medicine took center stage in the health
care practices around the world people who were sick used to
visit different kind of doctors. These doctors were not the
steth-wielding, tech-savvy, white-coated medical geniuses of
today. Mostly, they were bearded, wizened and gnarled humans
looking less like physicians and more like witches or wizards.
But they were revered, loved and even feared because of one
particular skill they possessed – the healing touch.
In the early days of civilization, a vast majority of people
were cut off from ‘formal’ medical care. Competent physicians
were a luxury, to be enjoyed only by the super-rich and
royalty. For everyone else, there was the local witch-doctor
who was respected for his or her in-depth knowledge of folk
medicine. This was the man or woman who treated everything from
boils to gangrene, from cesarean to malaria and even small pox.
What is astonishing is that many of these so-called ‘doctors’
effectively cured their patients. What is even more interesting
is that these medicines have lost none of their charms with the
passage of time and more and more of them are finding their
rightful place in mainstream medicines.
Remember how your grandma used to give you wild cherry bark for
cough, or boil the twigs and leaves of red cedar to cure your
cold? Well, that’s folk medicine! If you were to ask your
grandma how she learnt those techniques, she’d draw a blank!
These unofficial health-related practices were passed on
informally by word of mouth and were developed through
observation and experimentation.
Illnesses ranging from the common cold and sore throat to
warts, cancer, malaria, impotence and arthritis are said to be
treated through folk medicine.
Folk medicine largely depended on the use of natural materials
such as herbs, plant roots, trees, barks, fruits, insects and
food items. Therefore, these practitioners paid a lot of
attention to botany.
But the advent of modern medicine saw a decline in folk
medicine as these ‘rustic’ practices were put under the
microscope, dissected and then discarded as worthless. One more
reason contributed to the decline of folk medicine.
Folk medicine started its downward slide with the advent of
magical healing powers. Seedy people on the lookout for a few
fast bucks were successful in capitalizing on the trust and
faith of large sections of the society. Once their ruse came to
light, people began to lose faith in folk medicine. Soon folk
medicine was relegated to a gray area between orthodox medicine
and quackery.
However, as more and more people have started to realize, there
is a wealth of knowledge in traditional folk medicine. As people
have started adopting the holistic way of life, there is a
struggle to re-invent the precious folk medicine of yore. In
recent years, the folk medicine of indigenous people is
becoming more popular.
Some examples of folk medicines that we use in our daily life
are:
Garlic - to reduce blood cholesterol levels
Chinese acupuncture - to treat blood clotting and migraine
The juice of neem leaves - to treat malaria
Poultice - to treat infected wounds
Turmeric - to treat bee or wasp stings
Today, amazingly more than two-thirds of the world’s population
rely on the healing powers of folk medicine at some point of
their lives. For many nothing else is available or affordable.
For some, nothing else is acceptable. And for a very few,
nothing else works.
About The Author: http://www.methodsofhealing.com
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