CHAPTER XVIII.
INDIAN MEDICINE.
The following is a part of an address which the author read at a meeting of the Bristol District Medical Society.
Among the thousand popular delusions upon the subject of medicine, the belief in Indian skill is by no means the least. It has come to be almost universally understood that the American Indians, previous to their intercourse with the whites, possessed a knowledge of sovereign remedies for all diseases; that these specifics, when employed either as prophylactics, or curatives, always had the desired effect; and it has been supposed that to this cause they owed their vigor—their exemption from a large share of the diseases found in civilized and refined communities—their freedom from the decrepitude of age, and their longevity. The force of this popular error seems to increase as the Indian and his history decline and pass away. The mysterious obscurity which hangs over this people, and is every day burying them deeper and deeper in oblivion, tends to increase the superstition and magnify the wonder. Yet there is no need of any mistake upon this subject. A little attention to the history of the first settlements in America, will show that the Indians neither had, nor pretended to have, any such medical knowledge. If they had used any rational means for the recovery of their sick, or possessed any such skill, the sharp-sighted settlers would not have been slow to learn or put them in practice. The first Europeans who came to America found the vast wilderness inhabited by a race of red men, who, in their personal appearance, and in their social and domestic habits, were different from all other men. They were in a perfectly savage state, and appeared never to have had intercourse with any other race of men. They had no knowledge of anything except what pertained to the art of war, or the means of subsistence. Confined by no local attachments, their numerous tribes migrated hither and thither as their necessities or inclinations prompted. Free from all the contaminations and pollutions which find their way into civilized and refined communities, they enjoyed a high degree of health and vigor, and were subject to few diseases. They were liable to the accidents of war and the chase; they sometimes suffered from hunger, and sometimes from surfeit; they were liable to scurvy and some inflammatory diseases, and sometimes fatal epidemics, of the character of which we have no certain knowledge, prevailed among them; but it is certain that some of the most loathsome, and many of the most fatal diseases which prevail among us, were unknown to them. As we found them they were a vigorous, powerful, athletic, people, capable of severe labor and long endurance. The Indian grasped the bow with the strength of a more than Roman arm, and launched the arrow to its mark with a force and precision which defied all competition. No pale face could roam the forest, ford the stream, or war with the bear like him.
These extraordinary physical powers were in some measure incident to them as a race every way adapted to a savage condition, and in part were the result of their habits of life. From their earliest moments to their latest age, their lives consisted of one continued scene of savage exposure and hardship. Of course they had few invalids among them. Those who could endure the hardening, lived and became mighty hunters and brave warriors; and such as could not, died off. They had no physicians, no clergymen, nor special artisans among them. They had no written language, and cultivated no science. They believed in the Great Spirit—they heard his voice in the thunder—saw his bow in the cloud, and his arrows in the lightning—and all the means which they employed for the restoration of their sick consisted of superstitious incantations, with rude invocations to the Great Spirit.
In 1623, Massasoit, who was Sachem of the Wampanoags, was severely sick, and supposed by the Indians to be dying. Mr. Winslow, a deputy from the whites, found the chief in a critical condition, and but just alive. A multitude of Indians of both sexes stood around, practising their charms and uttering loud moans and wild invocations, but no one gave him medicine or cordial. In this situation the Sachem must soon have died, had not Mr. Winslow taken upon himself to administer medicine and cordials, and such food as the sick man required, by which treatment he soon recovered.
From this, it appears very evident that this tribe had no knowledge of medicinal remedies, for, if they had had, they would have used them for the relief of their Sachem. Soon after this continent began to be settled by the whites, it was found that a mortal epidemic was spreading among the Indians, by which they died in heaps—the young and the old together. Whole families and whole tribes perished, and yet they employed no rational means either as prophylactics or curatives. But believing that the Great Spirit had become angry with them, they resorted to charms and incantations, by which they hoped to appease his wrath. Such has always been the practice with savage nations everywhere, and many of the half civilized have done little more.
The Egyptians had a written language and laws, and had made considerable advances in many mechanical arts—had reduced astronomy to a science, and had built the Pyramids, long before they began to employ any rational means for the cure of their sick. Their practice consisted wholly of superstitious rites and ceremonies. One of their earliest medicinal remedies was the onion. This was not given to the patient to swallow, but was suspended over his door, placed upon his bed, or hung about his neck. The ceremonies and manipulations were performed by the priests, and this remedy, thus employed, was thought to be so efficacious that the onion came to be regarded as an object of religious worship, and enrolled in the catalogue of Egyptian deities; and so great was their veneration for the onion, that, even after the patient was dead, they sometimes placed it in his clenched hand, and embalmed it with his body. Not long since, one was taken from the hand of a mummy, where it had probably remained for more than two thousand years, and was afterwards planted and found to grow. This would seem to be almost sufficient to satisfy Egyptian credulity of the immortality of their supposed deity.
The condition of the American Indians, when first discovered by Europeans, was the most perfect savage state ever known, and their history affords ample proof that, previous to their intercourse with the whites, they had never thought of using medicinal remedies for the restoration of their sick. Then, whence comes this almost universal belief in Indian skill? I answer, it has been brought about by numerous fraudulent schemes contrived by numerous Americans to dupe a credulous public. Crafty knaves have found that the American people, with all their boasted intelligence, are easily imposed upon by empirical pretensions. The ignorant old squaw has been applied to for medicine, until her vanity and cupidity have made her a doctress. Stimulated by her example, the Africano-Indian and the Anglo-African have embarked in the same enterprise, and although profoundly ignorant of everything pertaining to the subject of medicine, they find plenty of employment, and their apparent ignorance is looked upon as evidence of their knowledge of the deep mysteries of Indian medicine. But the insatiable cupidity of the Yankee would not long allow the colored race the sole enjoyment of so profitable a field. Indian Syrups, Indian Balsams, Indian Pills, and numerous other so-called Indian remedies, were contrived and manufactured by peculent white men—foisted upon the public and readily sold. The bait, glossed over with Indian varnish, was readily swallowed. The silly purchasers supposed they were taking nothing but genuine Indian preparations, whilst the proprietors were themselves astonished and delighted at the success of their nefarious rpoductions, and the press for ample pecuniary consideration has been brought to lend its aid to confirm the falsehood and sanctify the fraud. The honest Indian scorns all these schemes, and is never found among the motley crew of Indian doctors. It is made up not of genuine Indians, but of negroes, mulattoes, and, meanest of all, some white men, who have stolen the Indian livery for their own unhallowed purposes. Perhaps these miscreants may sometimes be found to possess some smattering of medical knowledge, but it is certain that all that they do know, be it more or less, has been gained from the white people, and not a particle of it from any Indian source. And perhaps some of the preparations sold in the shops for Indian medicines may not be wholly worthless, but the pretension that they are genuine Indian remedies is a fraud. Every one of them has been contrived and put forth by some mercenary white man, who, although he may have made a fortune by it, is nevertheless himself a knave.
Quackery in any form is always an evil, but it may be only a partial evil, to result in universal good. It has in a few instances brought to light valuable remedies, and it may tend to correct and admonish legitimate medicine. But the motives which produce it are always mercenary, although ignorance and mistakes may sometimes slightly palliate the crime, yet an inordinate desire for gain, without sufficient strength of moral principle to control the means, may always be regarded as the moving cause. Quackery always has existed, and no doubt always will: it is a moral disease, which assumes a great variety of types and forms, that are constantly changing yet never become extinct, but as if by transmigration, when the cheat disappears in one instance, it immediately shows itself in another, and there is always a sufficiency in variety and profusion to satisfy the tastes and appetites of all classes. The learned and the ignorant, the high and the low, the rich and the poor, all have it brought to their very doors, and served up and seasoned to their liking, and were we to judge by the greediness with which these precious morsels are devoured, one might readily conclude that, of a truth, "there is as much pleasure in being cheated as to cheat."
In the history of the world there are moral and social, as well as geological epochs. We live in the mercenary period, and quackery grows and flourishes now as mushrooms and ferns did in the carboniferous period. What is to be the next superabundant strata which shall swallow up the present towering stalks of moral ferns, we have no means of knowing; but let us hope that when that time does come, no out-croppings of present quackery shall remain visible. It is not my business at this time to attempt to clear off from the Indian character all the aspersions that have been cast upon it; but in justice to them, I am bound to say that not a single item of modern quackery is justly chargeable to the aborigines.