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Inca medicine healing art, application and plants
contents
- The healing arts of the Andes
- priest
- fortune tellers
- Illness as guilt
- human sacrifice
- remedy
- Skull surgery
- Medicinal plants of the Inca in today's medicine
- nasturtium
- Maca
- Amaranth
- Andean medicine today
The healing arts of the Andes
Medicine was inseparable from the Incas when it came to religion, because the indigenous people had a holistic view of the universe, in which metaphysics, humans, animals, plants and inorganic matter were interwoven. Medicinal plants played a role as well as magic rituals, and a disease could have natural as well as supernatural causes for both Western senses. Also, as we call it, psyche played a crucial role in the onset and course of disease.
The Inca removed parts of the skull plate to treat injuries. From the point of view of some experts, they are even considered to be the developers of cranial surgery. (Image: angelaassmann / fotolia.com) Despising this ancient American medicine as superstitious is just as wrong as glorifying it as a miracle cure. Many of the magical ideas were accompanied by methods based not only on empirical knowledge but on empiricism. So they removed parts of the skull plate to let evil spirits escape - to treat a skull trauma they invented an effective practice.
The Incas knew different specialists in certain areas of healing. So there were plant experts, healers (a mixture of doctors and naturopaths) and shamans, who were mainly responsible for the spiritual dimension, namely the contact and the help of spirits. However, the shamans also used various medicinal herbs, oils and resins.
priest
The priests were also considered medicine men and fortune tellers. The chief priest in Cuzco was called Willaq Umu. He was not allowed to marry or to be sexually active, to eat meat and drink only water. His rank was almost equal to that of Sapa Inka. The highest priest supervised the cult of the sun, and he wore a gold headdress that symbolized the sun.
He appointed and dismissed the priests and was in charge of all temples in the Inca Empire. He crowned and trusted the supreme ruler.
fortune tellers
The healing of the Incas was not separated from their religion. Soothsayers were among medical practitioners as well as bone doctors. Because everything in the world was holistically related to each other in the Inca cosmos, the future was set.
Fortune-tellers predicted the outcome of political decisions as they diagnosed illnesses. Life saw the Inca as a plaything of invisible powers, and the fortune-tellers could therefore recognize these powers. They drew their conclusions from the movements of tarantulas, interpreting the innards of animals they sacrificed to the gods, or observing them, as coffee grounds read, as coca leaves spread on the ground.
Ayartapuc, special priests, understood themselves on necromancy: they communicated with the spirits of the dead.
Fortunetellers, priests and shamans drank ayahuasca, the juice of a liana that manipulates the central nervous system and triggers strong hallucinations in their rituals.
Illness as guilt
The Incas were not Christians, but they saw illness as a punishment for religious sacrilege. The Inca priests had to take the "confession"; the "sinner" bathed in running water to symbolically wash away his guilt. Exempt from this "confession" was the aristocracy, because they were regarded as "pure" from birth.
The Inca considered illnesses a punishment for a violation of religious rules. (Image: davidionut / fotolia.com) human sacrifice
Since the Indians saw epidemics as the wrath of the gods, they sacrificed people when the ruler fell ill or broke out epidemics.
The best victims were boys and girls before puberty. The victims were systematically prepared for their murder, drinking alcohol (corn beer) for weeks to numb their senses.
The priests buried the children alive. In their faith, the sacrificed became a deity with their death. Others were strangled or killed. When the Spaniards invaded South America, the human sacrifices had long since ceased. The Indians sacrificed guinea pigs, llamas and coca instead.
The child sacrifice was not mere cruelty. The Incas probably interpreted the course of the sun as blocking the way to the stars. The sacrifices of the saints should make the Sun God conciliatory so that he opens the star gates to the natives.
remedy
The Incas used countless plants to treat a variety of diseases, to move to other states of consciousness and to heal wounds.
The leaves of the coca smoke, the basis of today's cocaine, were an all-round agent. The Indians fought with it hunger and pain. The most important thing was coca, because it dampened the altitude sickness "Soroche", because the heart of the empire was the Andes, and Cusco, for example, is located at 3,416 meters altitude.
Tea made of coca leaves also served against vomiting, bleeding and diarrhea.
The aborigines burned wounds and closed them with the pines of ants, as do Indians in the Amazon basin today.
They made envelopes from the leaves and flowers of the Waycha plant, treated kidney diseases with Matico bark, and used quinine from Cinchona tree for fever, as did the resin of the sapodilla tree.
Seaweed served against the crop, against stomach inflammation helped a paste from tree resin. Quinoa leaves are used against infections in the throat and manioc for rheumatism, Apichu leaves against ticks.
The matecclu-grass eased eye inflammation, the chilca-grass inflammation of the joints. Datura served as a remedy for pain and falling asleep.
The aborigines saw hot springs as healing and bathed in them to prevent various diseases.
The Inca treated rheumatism with cassava. (Image: oxie99 / fotolia.com)Skull surgery
The indigenous people did brain surgery. They used special surgical knives, the tumi. They pierced openings over certain brain regions in the skull, report archaeologists of the Universidad Nacional Mayor of San Carlos in Lima.
The researchers suspect that the doctors targeted cannulated areas of the cerebral cortex to fight mumps or alcoholism.
A special role played the cranial operations for war injuries. The Incas fought mainly with blunt weapons - with clubs and slingshots. Because of this, cranial trauma was widespread among warriors. Anthropologist Valerie Andrushko and her colleague John Verano even suspect that the Incas developed skull surgery. In any case, the indigenous people have long mastered the skull opening, because the first skull with a hole is 2,400 years old.
In the heyday of the Inca culture, 90% of those operated lived for decades. Only every 20th patient had the wound inflamed. The healers disinfected the wounds with tannin, saponin and cinnamic acid. They drilled holes, sawed out a rectangle or took out a round plate, which they used again after the operation. This obviously served to treat acute skull injuries.
Obsidian knives would have been capable of performing these operations.
The two anthropologists showed cranial trauma in almost every second patient, as they had cracks in their cranial bones, and they developed blunt strokes. However, many of the fractures were in the places where the surgeons drilled the holes, and the doctors opened many of the skulls on the left, which is where a club usually hit. In addition, most of the treated were men, and they went to battle with the Incas.
The experts report a cemetery in which every second man, every third woman and every third adolescent had surgery on the skull. This is world class. Not only war injuries, but also a delayed middle ear infection could have been the reason for many of the skull openings.
Medicinal plants of the Inca in today's medicine
The healing arts of the Andes meet us even where we least suspect them, namely in the garden allotment or in the health food store.
nasturtium
The large nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus) not only tastes good in the salad, it also works well against infections of the bladder and bronchitis. The spicy taste comes from the mustard oil contained in the plant, which in turn contains glucosinolates, and which help against bacteria, viruses and fungi. It also promotes blood circulation.
The nasturtium is one of the major medicinal plants of the Inca and helps, for example, in pain and circulatory disorders. (Image: pictures_for_you / fotolia.com) The home of the cress are Peru and Bolivia, and the Indians took them for pain and healed wounds. It is called Nasturtium, because the flowers in orange color reminded the Spaniards of the robes of the Capuchin monks.
Maca
The Maca plant grows in the Andes up to 4,400 meters altitude and is considered a superfood. So far, scientists have detected the following substances: calcium, iodine, iron, copper, manganese, vitamin B2, B5, C, niacin and sterols.
In Peru, the plant is cultivated on approximately 5,000 hectares and contributes several tens of millions of euros each year. Maca is extremely resistant. It grows in the high mountains, so it is exposed to high heat as well as strong front and violent winds. Add to that the intense UV radiation.
The indigenous people eat the tubers, process them into porridge, cook or bake them. Carbohydrates are over 50%, plus 10.2% proteins and 2.2% lipids. Maca is not only important as a source of minerals, but also as a food corn, rice or wheat. In contrast to potatoes, the leaves can be eaten raw as well as cooked.
Clinical studies have suggested that the plant has a positive effect on sexual problems. But this is not guaranteed. Study participants showed a growing sexual desire, and Macapulver was effective against depressive moods and fatigue.
The Peruvian Gustavo Gonzales studied the effects of maca for three months on twelve men. After two weeks, their sperm doubled on average. The men made more hormones and felt subjectively sexually more efficient.
Amaranth is rich in many valuable nutrients and can, for example, compensate for iron deficiency. (Image: dima_pics / fotolia.com) Amaranth
Amaranth is a foxtail plant cultivated by indigenous peoples of South America for millennia. The seeds are much smaller and lighter than cereals like rye or barley.
The Incas cooked the roots not only as food, but also in constipation and sluggishness. For anemia, the natives drink the juice and boil the plant to make envelopes for wounds.
Amaranth contains a lot of calcium, magnesium, iron and zinc, a lot of vitamin E and vitamin B. The iron content is so high that the medicinal plant is especially suitable for people suffering from iron deficiency.
Scientific studies suggest that amaranth also helps against the following symptoms: fatigue, anxiety, headache, migraine, sleep disorders, stomach problems.
Amaranth contains up to 16% proteins and essential amino acids. It is suitable for athletes who also need magnesium and protein, for pregnant women, children and adolescents; for vegans who can feed themselves with protein and iron that we otherwise eat through meat.
The plant is also good for people who suffer from a gluten allergy because unlike cereals it does not contain this substance. In atopic dermatitis it does not produce a defense reaction.
Andean medicine today
In 1981, the Center for Andes Medicine was founded in Peru. Today it has a collection of 4000 plants and produces medicinal herbs. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)
Literature:
The fight against the Spaniards: An Inca king reports. Übers. U. ed. by Martin Lienhard. Dusseldorf 2003.
Catherine Julien: The Inca. History, culture, religion. Munich 2003
Hans-Dietrich Disselhoff: Oasis towns and magical stones in the land of the Inca: Archaeological research expeditions in Peru. Berlin 1993.