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Would you trust a local medicine man if you were sick & stranded in the rainforest?

Sentience

Sentience

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Would you trust a local medicine man if you were sick & stranded in the rainforest?

The max-characters for thread titles is a little restrictive.

If you were stranded in the rain forest, maybe your plane crashed, and there was no chance in hell that you are going to see a doctor tonight, or even tomorrow or the next day maybe.....lets say you have sever dysentery to the point of it being life threatening and/or you have been bit by a poisoning snake, your limbs feel like they are on fire and you are dizzy with a rapid pulse.

You encounter a tribe who speaks some Spanish or Portuguese. Its reasonable to assume that they are familiar with the local diseases, they know and have experience with the local plants, and they know the local snakes and spiders and predators.

The medicine man says he can help you and save your life.

Would you accept his help, trusting him, drink down some vile tasting sludge he brewed up, allow him to apply some funky looking paste to your wounds and bandage it up with a leaf?

Would you have a degree of faith in this tribes experience with medicines based on multiple generations of anecdotal evidence passed down through oral traditions? Would you believe that this tribe knew of valuable and effective medicinal formulas despite the fact that they have not proven its efficacy to the western scientific community? If you got better and somehow managed to survive, would you dismiss it as a placebo effect or assume that placebo is always the more likely explanation in the absence of irrefutable objective proof?
 
If I was in a situation where I felt I was going to die anyways....my answer is yes I would put my trust in his/her hands. I have heard good stories about plants we don't use in western medicine healing certain wounds, and I suspect they have good treatments for tons of other diseases you can get from bug/snake bites.
 
Yes. What would I have to lose? The worst that could happen is that the remedy doesn't really have an effect, in which case I'm exactly where I left off. I don't think a medicine man would be ignorant enough to actually poison me.

If I survived, I think I would probably have the tendency to chalk up my good health to the medicine man's remedy, despite the conclusion being rather unscientific.
 
Depends on the life expectancy of the village. If it is under 45 I wouldn't hold out much hope but what choice do I have?
 
Not sure what you're getting at here, but these men typically known as shamans probably know more about drugs than any pharmacist in a developed nation.
 
Changed said:
Not sure what you're getting at here, but these men typically known as shamans probably know more about drugs than any pharmacist in a developed nation.
Click to expand...

Agreed....in some ways. A pharmacist might understand the biochemistry in material terms more deeply than the shaman, but the shaman is likely to have a deeper and more personal knowledge of plant medicines....actually trying them himself and understanding the side effects and nature of the plants on a personal subjective level that you could never get from reading a list of actions and side effects.
 
If it were an acute flair up of a disease that I already knew a lot about I would be balancing what I could know about the shaman's remedy against what I knew about the disease. If it were a disease indigenous to the shaman's region that I knew little or nothing about I'd trust the shaman and be a little less about evaluating the shaman's knowledge and the disease but still making a lot of mental notes.
 
We should ALWAYS play an active role in our own health whether we are dealing with a western physician or a indigenous shaman.
 
Medicine man/woman? Absolutely!

Sentience said:
The max-characters for thread titles is a little restrictive.

If you were stranded in the rain forest, maybe your plane crashed, and there was no chance in hell that you are going to see a doctor tonight, or even tomorrow or the next day maybe.....lets say you have sever dysentery to the point of it being life threatening and/or you have been bit by a poisoning snake, your limbs feel like they are on fire and you are dizzy with a rapid pulse.

You encounter a tribe who speaks some Spanish or Portuguese. Its reasonable to assume that they are familiar with the local diseases, they know and have experience with the local plants, and they know the local snakes and spiders and predators.

The medicine man says he can help you and save your life.

Would you accept his help, trusting him, drink down some vile tasting sludge he brewed up, allow him to apply some funky looking paste to your wounds and bandage it up with a leaf?

Would you have a degree of faith in this tribes experience with medicines based on multiple generations of anecdotal evidence passed down through oral traditions? Would you believe that this tribe knew of valuable and effective medicinal formulas despite the fact that they have not proven its efficacy to the western scientific community? If you got better and somehow managed to survive, would you dismiss it as a placebo effect or assume that placebo is always the more likely explanation in the absence of irrefutable objective proof?
Click to expand...

I'm beginning to think that medicine men/women know a LOT more about true "medicine" than those that went to some prestigious college. I might just go do this for some of my health problems. If I knew where to find a reputable one, I'd go this week!

Western medicine is largely based on what is found in nature anyhow, so yep! I'd do it in a heartbeat! I think plants & critters are a lot less harmful than many of our chemical counterparts.

As for the placebo-effect, that happens with ANY medicine, especially western medicine, so really no different, although natural medicines can also be as harmful as western medicines, so I'd proceed with caution, but if my rear-end was on the line, you bet I'd do it! Weather it was a placebo or not, if it works, who cares?

Altmed
 
I dont know why some people assume that any medicine that hasnt gone through the absolute most rigorous testing must most likely be placebo. I think that is an ignorant perspective.

Its not like MOST products are just random plants chosen for no reason with made up health benefits which have a craps shoot chance of helping someone.....most scientific inquiries are first based on anecdotal evidence, not scientific evidence....once you have your hypothesis or even a large body of reports and experience with use, you can test your hypothesis with the scientific method.

Sometimes skeptics take things to the point of absurdity. I think there are a lot of very effective natural therapies that are rejected because there is no profit in a medicine that cannot be patented.
 
Most people are simply stupid. And, stupid sheep to boot. If it has been approved by the government, it has to be good, right? (Even if the side-effects list is a mile long).
 
I believe western drugs help a lot of people, but our system of medicine is really created for wartime and battle fields.....we excel in emergency medicine and also in prolonging life by suppressing symptoms, but the idea of "health" as part of medicine is a foreign concept.

The closest thing to a holistic practitioner in western medicine is probably a registered dietitian, but many of them are not even trained in herbal supplements or drug interactions...they should be.

Maybe nurse practitioners could fill this role, adopting more holistic knowledge and trying to provide some education.....REAL education, not just stuff any idiot could guess, like dont choke down some much steak fat and hamburgers, dont pour mounds of salt on everything, eat some vegetables.....you can go a lot deeper than that, choosing foods by properties......astringent, bitter, drying, moisturizing, increases or decreases motility, omega-fatty acids, glycemic index, inflammatory rating, anti-oxidants, foods that have effects on the endocrine system like artichokes, appropriate use of vitamins even before you reach emergency levels.....

This is good stuff and its not as simple and dumbed down as what they have been feeding us.
 
yup, and would take it ... I HAVE BEEN IN REAL BAD PAIN AND IF ANYONE HEAR HAS FELT REAL PAIN , I MEAN PAIN THAT HUERTS - LIKE I TORE MY ACL /mcl LIGAMENT then you know pain.
i felt the fibres trying to grow back together and reach for each other while laying in bed under the influence of 110% pure proof moonshine and tylenol 3's and nothing else ... but it the shine only really helped. I was in europe 3 more weeks after this injury occured. So yes, if it was this bad I would drink motor oil. To kill the pain.
 
ofcourse i would, if his treatment had ANY chance of saving me if i would die otherwise. and if his treatment killed me oh well
 
^lol He is saying that you can't have over 100% of anything. I'm assuming your referring to having 110 proof alcohol. This means that your alcohol is 55% alcohol by volume, as proof is double the percent value. 100%=200 proof
 
Most definitely yes. The idea to say no probably wouldn't even enter my head.
 
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