Seventeenth-century Americans found the medical practices of the
Indians interesting enough to include descriptions of them in their
accounts of the New World. The attitude of the authors of these early
observations is a mixture of curiosity, wonder, and--on
occasion--admiration.
Henry Spelman, one of the early colonists, wrote of Jamestown and
Virginia as they were in 1609 and 1610. He described the manner of
visiting with the sick among the Indians. According to Spelman, the
"preest" laid the sick Indian upon a mat and, sitting down beside him,
placed a bowl of water and a rattle between them. Taking the water into
his mouth and spraying it over the Indian, the priest then began to
beat his chest and make noises with the rattle. Rising, he shook the
rattle over all of his patient's body, rubbed the distressed parts with
his hands, and then sprinkled water over him again.
Like the colonist, the Indian tried to draw out blood or other matter
from the sick or wounded person. The method often used for releasing
the ill humor from a painful joint or limb must have caused
considerable suffering but may have offered certain advantages in
preventing fatal infection. If the affected part could bear it, the
Indian thrust a smoldering pointed stick deep into the sore place and
kept it there until the excess matter could drain off. Another
technique for burning and opening had a small cone of slowly burning
wood inserted in the distressed place, "letting it burn out upon the
part, which makes a running sore effectually."
Still another method for treating a wound was for the priest to gash
open the wound with a small bit of flint, suck the blood and other
matter from it, and finally apply to it the powder of a root. A
colonist in describing the practice wrote that "they have many
professed phisitions, who with their charmes and rattels, with an
infernall rowt of words and actions, will seeme to sucke their inwarde
griefe from their navels or their grieved places." Judging by other
accounts written during the century concerning Indian medicine, the
powdered root may well have been sassafras, of which there was an
abundance in the Jamestown area. The priest dried the root in the
embers of a fire, scraped off the outer bark, powdered it, and bound
the wound after applying the powder.
Not only did the native American resort to a crude form of bloodletting
but he practiced sweating as well--which was also common to
seventeenth-century European medical practice. In Captain John Smith's
description of Virginia it was noted that when troubled with "dropsies,
swellings, aches, and such like diseases" the cure was to build a stove
"in the form of a dovehouse with mats, so close that a fewe coales
therein covered with a pot, will make the pacient sweate extreamely."
Before lighting his stove, the Indian covered his sweating place with
bark so close that no air could enter. When he began to sweat
profusely, the sick Indian dashed out from his heated shelter and into
a nearby creek, sea, or river. An Englishman commented that after
returning to his hut again he "either recover[s] or give[s] up the
ghost."
The Indians, like Moliere's stage physician, believed in the value of
the purge. Every spring they deliberately made themselves sick with
drinking the juices of a medicinal root. The dosage purged them so
thoroughly that they did not recover until three or four days later.
The Indians also ate green corn in the spring to work the same effect.
The Indian medicine man, like his European counterpart, frequently
dispensed medicines or drugs. As has been the custom among many men in
the medical profession, the medicine man would not reveal the secrets
of his medicines. "Made very knowing in the hidden qualities of plants
and other natural things," he considered it a part of the obligations
of his priesthood to conceal the information from all but those who
were to succeed him. On the other hand, the Indian priest showed his
concern for the health of his people--and the similarity of his
attitude to that of present day practices--by making an exception to
his canon of secrecy in the case of drugs needed in emergencies arising
on a hunting trip and during travel.
According to one early eighteenth-century history of Virginia, the
Indian in choosing raw materials for drugs preferred roots and barks of
trees to the leaves of plants or trees. If the drug were to be taken
internally it was mixed with water; when juices were to be applied
externally they were left natural unless water was necessary for
moistening. Whatever the drug and however utilized, the Indian called
it _wisoccan_ or _wighsacan_, for this term was not a specific herb,
as some of the earlier settlers thought, but a general term.
Besides sassafras, medicinal roots and barks, the Indian believed in
beneficial effects of a kind of clay called _wapeig_. The clay, in the
opinion of the Indians, cured sores and wounds; an English settler
marvelled to find in use "a strange kind of earth, the vertue whereof I
know not; but the Indians eate it for physicke, alleaging that it
cureth the sicknesse and paine of the belly." Insomuch as the Indian
priest preferred to keep his professional secrets, the colonist was
unlikely ever to learn the "vertue" of the clay.
If the Indian medicine man had not believed that his gods would be
displeased--or his prestige lowered--by revealing the nature of the
_wisoccan_ he prescribed, it would have been possible for the early
Virginians to have drawn upon the Indian knowledge of, and experience
with, the simples and therapies of the New World. (Perhaps the
"vertues" of the clay would have cured the "paines" of the Jamestown
bellies.) As it was, the settlers make little mention of a reliance
upon the Indians for medical assistance.