Quechua
Medicine
Health and Traditional Medicine
For the Quechua people, the origins
of many diseases are mysterious. Therefore, to diagnose and cure, they
have to simultaneously resort to explanations; ancestral cosmic remedies
- including a rich tradition in the use of the Andean pharmacology -;
medical concepts that Colony brought with it and concepts from the modern
science. Seeding with many species in many places at different times,
the farmer reduce agricultural risks with the same rationality that
it is facing with diseases.
Treatments
For native conception, there are not differences between natural
or magical diseases / treatments. It is more unified, like a system
of relations between the body, its several souls, the society and the
cosmos, full of so alive and real beings as we. It is like inseparable
parts that form a harmonious whole. The Andean medicine has a globalized
conception of body and soul, person, society and the cosmos; it has
natural treatments, personal cares and ritual remedies that facilitate
the satisfactory response of the Andean patient.
Yatiri
Yatiri (the one that knows) is the specialist
for diagnosis and treatment of all type of disorder physical-psychic-cosmic
(including diseases). Moreover, its specialization could include learning
processes, and as a last resort, could be of supernatural type, because
of to have been touched by a lightning or to have already received
superior powers in the birth. Simultaneously, the Yatiri is a doctor,
fortune teller and priest. It dominates the ritual resources, although
it also knows the natural ones. Within these, jampiri or qulliri (the
one that heals) is specialized in diseases and has a wide knowledge
of herbs and other natural medicinal resources.
