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Health and Temperance

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International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 28, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 41.

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Health and Temperance.

The Taste for Medical Humbug.

Though it speaks for modern civilization, the masses of the people are wont to esteem the savage as preternaturally wise in the secrets of nature, more especially in the prevention and elimination of disease, accrediting him with knowledge, botanical, pharmaceutical, and therapeutical, that, if possessed of but a shadow of reality, would be little less than divine. In this we have interesting evidence of man's tendency to reversion, and of lingering attributes of the final state of his awe in the presence of the occult and inherent worship of the unknown; for how frequently one encounters, in all ranks and classes of society, individuals who, in spite of refined teachings and surroundings, exhibit an unmistakable taste for charlatanism in some of its many forms, secular and spiritual!
Medicine, as exemplified among the savage races and tribes of America, is practically one and the same with the shamanism of the European and Asiatic nomad, the fetich of the native African, and the obi rites and voodoo-worship of West India blacks and negroes of the Gulf States; a careful examination of all reveals not only a common origin, but a unity of purpose. The medicine of the Indian is his religion and philosophy; and it comprises everything in life and nature, real or imaginary, superstitious or occult; and withal it is a mystery so subtle in its many factors as utterly to defy specific definition, or perfect elucidation.
The medicine man is no more a physician, in the modern and enlightened acceptation of the term, than an ape is a man because it chances to assume the erect posture and mimic the attributes of the human race; there is a slight analogy, but nothing more. The savage knows absolutely nothing of the relationships existing between cause and effect, of the action of remedies as remedies, of physiological conditions and phenomena, or indeed of any agency that is not directly born of the occult.—Popular Science Monthly.