The history of the relationship between products from living plants and healing medications goes back to the very beginnings of medicine itself, from 3700 B.C. Egypt, followed by the Chinese and later the Greeks and Romans. Evidence from some of the earliest sources–the Atharvaveda from India (written in about 1200 BC), the Petrie collection from Kahun in Egypt (from about 1880 BC), and the Avesta from Persia (compiled in about the 6th century AD)–shows that early medicine was based mainly on religion and magic but also included a growing use of herbs and mineral products.
Folk healers are unlicensed but not necessarily untrained. Like physicians, they pursue their specialties, learning by observation and imitation. Often healing is considered a gift that runs in a family and is passed down from mother to daughter or from father to son. The ability to set bones, for example, is thought to be hereditary as is the power to stop bleeding. Charms are often recited by the healer and jealously guarded.
Faith healers make use of prayer and touch to treat disease. Most other healers use some combination of prayer, charms, and rubbing or massage; or they prescribe herbal teas or decoctions of animal parts and vegetables. There are also magical rituals, or procedures, such as pulling a person through the cleft of a tree or a bramble bush to be divested of disease. Then there is putting a bag containing a mixture of worms and human hair under a threshold to cause disease. The person who steps over the hidden bag will get ill because folk healers can cause disease as well as cure it.
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