Such is the belief upon which their medical practice is based, and
whatever we may think of the theory it must be admitted that the
practice is consistent in all its details with the views set forth
in the myth. Like most primitive people the Cherokees believe that
disease and death are not natural, but are due to the evil influence
of animal spirits, ghosts, or witches. Haywood, writing in 1823,
states on the authority of two intelligent residents of the Cherokee
nation:
In ancient times the Cherokees had no conception of anyone
dying a natural death. They universally ascribed the death of
those who perished by disease to the intervention or agency of
evil spirits and witches and conjurers who had connection with
the Shina (Anisgi´na) or evil spirits.... A person dying by
disease and charging his death to have been procured by means
of witchcraft or spirits, by any other person, consigns that
person to inevitable death. They profess to believe that their
conjurations have no effect upon white men.[5]
[Footnote 5: Haywood, John: Natural and Aboriginal History of East
Tennessee, 267-8, Nashville, 1823.]
On the authority of one of the same informants, he also mentions
the veneration which “their physicians have for the numbers four and
seven, who say that after man was placed upon the earth four and seven
nights were instituted for the cure of diseases in the human body and
the seventh night as the limit for female impurity.”[6]
[Footnote 6: Ibid., p. 281.]
Viewed from a scientific standpoint, their theory and diagnosis
are entirely wrong, and consequently we can hardly expect their
therapeutic system to be correct. As the learned Doctor Berendt
states, after an exhaustive study of the medical books of the Mayas,
the scientific value of their remedies is “next to nothing.” It must
be admitted that many of the plants used in their medical practice
possess real curative properties, but it is equally true that many
others held in as high estimation are inert. It seems probable that in
the beginning the various herbs and other plants were regarded as so
many fetiches and were selected from some fancied connection with the
disease animal, according to the idea known to modern folklorists as
the doctrine of signatures. Thus at the present day the doctor puts
into the decoction intended as a vermifuge some of the red fleshy
stalks of the common purslane or chickweed (Portulaca oleracea),
because these stalks somewhat resemble worms and consequently must
have some occult influence over worms. Here the chickweed is a fetich
precisely as is the flint arrow head which is put into the same
decoction, in order that in the same mysterious manner its sharp
cutting qualities may be communicated to the liquid and enable it
to cut the worms into pieces. In like manner, biliousness is called
by the Cherokees dalâ´nĭ or “yellow,” because the most apparent
symptom of the disease is the vomiting by the patient of the yellow
bile, and hence the doctor selects for the decoction four different
herbs, each of which is also called dalânĭ, because of the color of
the root, stalk, or flower. The same idea is carried out in the tabu
which generally accompanies the treatment. Thus a scrofulous patient
must abstain from eating the meat of a turkey, because the fleshy
dewlap which depends from its throat somewhat resembles an inflamed
scrofulous eruption. On killing a deer the hunter always makes an
incision in the hind quarter and removes the hamstring, because this
tendon, when severed, draws up into the flesh; ergo, any one who
should unfortunately partake of the hamstring would find his limbs
draw up in the same manner.
There can be no doubt that in course of time a haphazard use of
plants would naturally lead to the discovery that certain herbs are
efficacious in certain combinations of symptoms. These plants would
thus come into more frequent use and finally would obtain general
recognition in the Indian materia medica. By such a process of
evolution an empiric system of medicine has grown up among the
Cherokees, by which they are able to treat some classes of ailments
with some degree of success, although without any intelligent idea
of the process involved. It must be remembered that our own medical
system has its remote origin in the same mythic conception of disease,
and that within two hundred years judicial courts have condemned
women to be burned to death for producing sickness by spells and
incantations, while even at the present day our faith-cure professors
reap their richest harvest among people commonly supposed to belong
to the intelligent classes. In the treatment of wounds the Cherokee
doctors exhibit a considerable degree of skill, but as far as any
internal ailment is concerned the average farmer’s wife is worth all
the doctors in the whole tribe.
The faith of the patient has much to do with his recovery, for the
Indian has the same implicit confidence in the shaman that a child has
in a more intelligent physician. The ceremonies and prayers are well
calculated to inspire this feeling, and the effect thus produced
upon the mind of the sick man undoubtedly reacts favorably upon his
physical organization.
The following list of twenty plants used in Cherokee practice will
give a better idea of the extent of their medical knowledge than
could be conveyed by a lengthy dissertation. The names are given
in the order in which they occur in the botanic notebook filled on
the reservation, excluding names of food plants and species not
identified, so that no attempt has been made to select in accordance
with a preconceived theory. Following the name of each plant are
given its uses as described by the Indian doctors, together with its
properties as set forth in the United States Dispensatory, one of the
leading pharmacopoeias in use in this country.[7] For the benefit
of those not versed in medical phraseology it may be stated that
aperient, cathartic, and deobstruent are terms applied to medicines
intended to open or purge the bowels, a diuretic has the property of
exciting the flow of urine, a diaphoretic excites perspiration, and
a demulcent protects or soothes irritated tissues, while hæmoptysis
denotes a peculiar variety of blood-spitting and aphthous is an
adjective applied to ulcerations in the mouth.
[Footnote 7: Wood, T. B., and Bache, F.: Dispensatory of the United
States of America, 14th ed., Philadelphia, 1877.]