Benefits of Inca Healing Medicines

Before we dive into Inca Healing Medicine Benefits let us acknowledge its historical roots. The usage of Inca medicines as a healing therapy is not a new concept and various records can be found which indicate the implementation of this technique in the past. Quoting Prioreschi, “Inca medicine, like the medicine of the other populations in Pre-Colombian America, showed that mixture of naturalism and supernaturalism that was the rule in all ancient civilization.” The ancient Inca believed that sickness causes due to curses of angry gods because of any crime committed by a patient or by people living around her/him and can be cured by the usage of natural remedies and supernatural pleas.

Techniques of Inca Healing Medicines and their Benefits

Incas were quite advanced with their healing techniques. For example, Incas used coca leaf for pain relief which worked as analgesics.

• To treat symptoms of diseases Incas explored the physical details of the patient. They also had a great deal of interest in the psychological features of their patients.

• They had traditional surgical equipment like vilcachina which were used as syringes and used tumi as knives to perform complicated brain surgeries and amputations.

• Incas focused on disease preventive cultures like healthy diets and religious rituals.

• In the modern era, herbal medicines get importance but Incas had discovered these ages ago. Their medicines were plant-based.

Incas treated various diseases, some of the diseases they treated were eye problems, immune system disorders, gastrointestinal diseases, hemorrhages, paralysis, respiratory diseases, deformities, and leprosy.

As we are discussing Inca Healing Medicine Benefits, we must include medical treatments

performed by Incas in our discussion-

• Doctors who were kind of priests called Ichuris had anatomical and medicinal plants’ knowledge. People with symptoms of diseases visited these doctors to get treated.

• Incas developed their techniques so much, so that, they could perform complicated procedures like blood transfusions, amputations, and brain surgeries.

• Apart from using medicines, Incas also included religious rituals in their treatment processes because they believed that any ill action by the patient caused ailments and these religious rituals were performed to ‘scare the evils away’ and also reform the soul of a patient from ill actions.

• These religious rituals of ‘scaring away the evils’ were comprised of dancing and screaming along with rubbing.

This traditional knowledge of healing was passed from one generation to the other until today and Shamans practice this traditional healing technique.