Shamanism—Medicine Men and Priests

90:4.1The en­tire life of an­cient men was pro­phy­lac­tic; their re­li­gion was in no small mea­sure a tech­nique for dis­ease pre­ven­tion. And re­gard­less of the er­ror in their the­o­ries, they were whole­hearted in putting them into ef­fect; they had un­bounded faith in their meth­ods of treat­ment, and that, in it­self, is a pow­er­ful rem­edy.

90:4.2The faith re­quired to get well un­der the fool­ish min­is­tra­tions of one of these an­cient shamans was, af­ter all, not ma­te­ri­ally dif­fer­ent from that which is re­quired to ex­pe­ri­ence heal­ing at the hands of some of his later-day suc­ces­sors who en­gage in the non­sci­en­tific treat­ment of dis­ease.

90:4.3The more prim­i­tive tribes greatly feared the sick, and for long ages they were care­fully avoided, shame­fully ne­glected. It was a great ad­vance in hu­man­i­tar­i­an­ism when the evo­lu­tion of shaman­craft pro­duced priests and med­i­cine men who con­sented to treat dis­ease. Then it be­came cus­tom­ary for the en­tire clan to crowd into the sick­room to as­sist the shaman in howl­ing the dis­ease ghosts away. It was not un­com­mon for a woman to be the di­ag­nos­ing shaman, while a man would ad­min­is­ter treat­ment. The usual method of di­ag­nos­ing dis­ease was to ex­am­ine the en­trails of an an­i­mal.

90:4.4Dis­ease was treated by chant­ing, howl­ing, lay­ing on of hands, breath­ing on the pa­tient, and many other tech­niques. In later times the re­sort to tem­ple sleep, dur­ing which heal­ing sup­pos­edly took place, be­came wide­spread. The med­i­cine men even­tu­ally es­sayed ac­tual surgery in con­nec­tion with tem­ple slum­ber; among the first op­er­a­tions was that of trephin­ing the skull to al­low a headache spirit to es­cape. The shamans learned to treat frac­tures and dis­lo­ca­tions, to open boils and ab­scesses; the shamanesses be­came adept at mid­wifery.

90:4.5It was a com­mon method of treat­ment to rub some­thing mag­i­cal on an in­fected or blem­ished spot on the body, throw the charm away, and sup­pos­edly ex­pe­ri­ence a cure. If any­one should chance to pick up the dis­carded charm, it was be­lieved he would im­me­di­ately ac­quire the in­fec­tion or blem­ish. It was a long time be­fore herbs and other real medicines were in­tro­duced. Mas­sage was de­vel­oped in con­nec­tion with in­can­ta­tion, rub­bing the spirit out of the body, and was pre­ceded by ef­forts to rub med­i­cine in, even as mod­erns at­tempt to rub lin­i­ments in. Cup­ping and suck­ing the af­fected parts, to­gether with blood­let­ting, were thought to be of value in get­ting rid of a dis­ease-pro­duc­ing spirit.

90:4.6Since wa­ter was a po­tent fe­tish, it was uti­lized in the treat­ment of many ail­ments. For long it was be­lieved that the spirit caus­ing the sick­ness could be elim­i­nated by sweat­ing. Va­por baths were highly re­garded; nat­u­ral hot springs soon blos­somed as prim­i­tive health re­sorts. Early man dis­cov­ered that heat would re­lieve pain; he used sun­light, fresh an­i­mal or­gans, hot clay, and hot stones, and many of these meth­ods are still em­ployed. Rhythm was prac­ticed in an ef­fort to in­flu­ence the spir­its; the tom-toms were uni­ver­sal.

90:4.7Among some peo­ple dis­ease was thought to be caused by a wicked con­spir­acy be­tween spir­its and an­i­mals. This gave rise to the be­lief that there ex­isted a benef­i­cent plant rem­edy for ev­ery an­i­mal-caused dis­ease. The red men were es­pe­cially de­voted to the plant the­ory of uni­ver­sal reme­dies; they al­ways put a drop of blood in the root hole left when the plant was pulled up.

90:4.8Fast­ing, di­et­ing, and coun­terir­ri­tants were of­ten used as re­me­dial mea­sures. Hu­man se­cre­tions, be­ing def­i­nitely mag­i­cal, were highly re­garded; blood and urine were thus among the ear­li­est medicines and were soon aug­mented by roots and var­i­ous salts. The shamans be­lieved that dis­ease spir­its could be driven out of the body by foul-smelling and bad-tast­ing medicines. Purg­ing very early be­came a rou­tine treat­ment, and the val­ues of raw co­coa and qui­nine were among the ear­li­est phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal dis­cov­er­ies.

90:4.9The Greeks were the first to evolve truly ra­tio­nal meth­ods of treat­ing the sick. Both the Greeks and the Egyp­tians re­ceived their med­i­cal knowl­edge from the Eu­phrates val­ley. Oil and wine was a very early med­i­cine for treat­ing wounds; cas­tor oil and opium were used by the Sume­ri­ans. Many of these an­cient and ef­fec­tive se­cret reme­dies lost their power when they be­came known; se­crecy has al­ways been es­sen­tial to the suc­cess­ful prac­tice of fraud and su­per­sti­tion. Only facts and truth court the full light of com­pre­hen­sion and re­joice in the il­lu­mi­na­tion and en­light­en­ment of sci­en­tific re­search.