Aztec Advancement to Herbal Medicine - 557 Words

The Aztecs made great advances in many areas. One of their accomplishments was herbal medicine. Aztec medicine was based on two areas which are spiritual healing and herbal healing. Many of the illnesses that affected the Aztecs were caused to religious reasons: an angry god, bad birth signs, or something to that effect. The first step of treating an illness was a prayer and/or sometimes animal sacrifices. After that, herbal medicine would be used. Today, many herbal medicines can be found in Central America. The Aztecs knew how herbal medicines would work. They concentrated on finding out what herbal medicine could do. The Aztecs also concentrated on curing the symptoms of an illness than finding the cause of the illness. They believed that if a god gave a person an illness, they cannot anything to cure that patient. According to Aztec legends, Well, if the gods want this man to suffer, they can make my herbs powerless. If the medicine works, it means that the gods wish for the pat ient to be relieved. This statement was used to make herbal medicine useful. The Aztecs used leeches to help patients to ease their pain. The Aztecs developed a writing system in which they used pictographs. Pictographs were simple pictures that were used as a form of writing. With pictographs, they wrote many codices. The codices were a book or manuscript (written documents). The codices talked about ceremonies, the ritual calendar, and information about the gods and the universe. TheseShow MoreRelatedNative Americans and Their Contributions to the Advancement of Health and Medicine934 Words   |  4 PagesNative Americans and Their Contributions to the Advancement of Health and Medicine Stories of Native Americans contributions to the advancement of health and medicine traces were discovered in a small town in Nali, Africa. The very first onset of the beggining of modern pharmacology is the substance called quinine. This is the substance that came from a bark of a tree that grew in high elevations. The Indians has been using this substance to cure malaria, cramps, chills, hear-rythm disordersRead MoreA Short Note On 25 / 2016 Mesoamerican Medicine1590 Words   |  7 PagesMesoamerican Medicine As the institutes across the world progress in the fields of medicine, they still advance in the same manner as the ancient civilizations of Mesoamerica. The outlook on medicine was made more scientifically relevant throughout each of the Mesoamerican civilizations, Mayan, Incan, and Aztec. Each tribe had a different view when it came to the topic of medicine, but for the most part they utilized herbal ingredients and other natural remedies. Today, when we think of medicine we picture