By Robert A. Trennert
ISBN-10: 0826318398
ISBN-13: 9780826318398
In 1863 the Din started receiving treatment from the government in the course of their confinement at Bosque Redondo. Over the subsequent 90 years, a well-known litany of difficulties surfaced in periodic studies on Navajo well-being care: insufficient investment, understaffing, and the unrelenting unfold of such communicable illnesses as tuberculosis. In 1955 Congress transferred remedy from the Indian Bureau to the general public overall healthiness carrier. The Din authorised a few features of Western medication, yet in the course of the 19th century such a lot executive physicians actively labored to ruin age-old therapeutic practices. merely within the Thirties did medical professionals start to paintings withrather than opposetraditional healers. medication males linked disease with the supernatural and the disruption of nature's concord. Indian provider medical professionals conversant in Navajo tradition ultimately authorized conventional medication as a useful supplement to their health and wellbeing care.
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Additional resources for White man's medicine: government doctors and the Navajo, 1863-1955
Sample text
From this source they learned to plant and harvest corn and other crops. 2 On the basis of what is understood about Navajo groups prior to European contact, it is possible to make a few assumptions about their physical health. Page 3 It can be argued that in some important ways the Navajo were more healthy and robust than their European contemporaries, yet in other ways they were plagued with various ailments, some very simple, that made life difficult. Recent studies suggest that most of the contagious diseases that later decimated the American Indian (including the Navajo) were imported by the Europeans and did not affect pre-Columbian groups.
Another natural remedy was the sweat lodge, where heated stones sprinkled with water engulfed the patient in a cloud of steam. Sweat baths proved to be particularly effective in dealing with rheumatism and other problems of the joints. 12 There have always been individuals among the Navajo especially skilled in the use of herbs and plants. Many of them also understand and treat other medical problems, such as setting broken bones and cauterizing wounds. These individuals might best be described as "herbalists," since they handle only ordinary ailments and do not resort to the supernatural or ceremonial cures.
The Holy People are not regarded so much as virtuous as they are dangerous. They possess destructive powers, thereby necessitating that man understand and placate them. "15 Because the Navajo religion tends to classify illnesses by cause, rather than symptom, the main object in healing is to discover and remove the cause. And because sickness and disease in the Navajo mind are not connected to what modern doctors classify as medical reasons, traditional cures have focused heavily on the psychological or emotional.
White man's medicine: government doctors and the Navajo, 1863-1955 by Robert A. Trennert
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