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Show 168 1946 Pijoan, M. (Estados Unidos). "The Health and Customs of the Miskito Indians of Northern Nicaragua: interrelationships in a medical program" America Indigena, VI No. 1 (January, 1946), Mexico, D.F., pp. 41-66. Summary in Spanish, article in English. Note: Continued in Vol. VI No. 2, pp. 157-183. 1947 Aguirre Beltran, Gonzalo (Mexico). "La Medicina Indigena," America Indigena, VII No. 2 (April, 1947), pp. 107-127, English Summary: The emphasis placed upon the explanation of rational elements in medical indigenous practices by the first chroniclers and those which later studied Mexican medicine, forbade to this time, a clear understanding of the essentially mystical concepts which ruled the art of medicine among our ancestors. Everything contradictory with the customs of the Occidental man was considered as the devil's work or vain superstition. The indigenous medicine was classified according to the Christian table of values-ingoring in it the right as well as the wrong. The exteriorization of all the concept upon which was based the medicinal aboriginal art was condemned. Among the cultures of a more complex frame-as the Nahua, the Maya and Mixteca-Zapotecan, the rigid discipline imposed since the earliest times favored highly the interdependent relationship between father and son-allowing the establishment of the disobedience- punishment, obedience-reward complex, which in medicine brought the belief that sickness was due to sin. That explains the attitude of the indigenous medicine-man who answered when asked about the cause of illness: Such and such god is angry. The power attributed to each deity was in relation with the sicknesses-the water god sent colds and also rheumatism; the love goddess sent venereal diseases; the wind gods, the so-called "mal aire," etc. Among the remaining tribes of the country whose cultures were less complicated, diseases were said to result from the action of sorcerers. In such cases, the influence of hostile desires was the dominant concept. That is the reason why anxiety among those tribes was greater than among those first mentioned-since, frequently, the counter-sorcery technique was followed by direct aggression against the suspected sorcery-user. Coexistant with the above quoted concepts and spread all over the country was the common belief that a sickness could be the result of infusion into the body of any foreign matter of a spiritual nature. On the other hand, the concept of the loss of the soul |