Canadian Medical Guide > Analytical, Diagnostic and Therapeutic Techniques and Equipment > Therapeutics > Complementary Therapies > Medicine, Traditional Terms and Definitions

Medicine, Traditional

Medical Definition:	Systems of medicine based on cultural beliefs and practices handed down from generation to generation. The concept includes mystical and magical rituals, herbal therapy, and other treatments which may not be explained by modern medicine.
Guide Notes:	IM; includes medicine among aborigines & other primitive cultures & folk medicine among non-primitive cultures; specify geog; DF: MED TRADITIONAL
Also Called:	Ethnomedicine,Folk Remedies,Home Remedies,Medicine, Folk,Medicine, Indigenous,Medicine, Primitive

Medicine, Traditional Categories.

	Medicine, African Traditional - A system of traditional medicine which is based on the beliefs and practices of the African peoples. It includes treatment by medicinal plants and other materia medica as well as by the ministrations of diviners, medicine men, witch doctors, and sorcerers.
	Medicine, Arabic
	Medicine, Ayurvedic - The traditional Hindu system of medicine which is based on customs, beliefs, and practices of the Hindu culture. Ayurveda means "the science of Life": veda - science, ayur - life.
	Medicine, Kampo - System of herbal medicine practiced in Japan by both herbalists and practitioners of modern medicine. Kampo originated in China and is based on Chinese herbal medicine (MEDICINE, CHINESE TRADITIONAL).
	Medicine, Oriental Traditional - A system of traditional medicine which is based on the customs, beliefs and practices of the Oriental people.
	Shamanism - An intermediate stage between polytheism and monotheism, which assumes a "Great Spirit", with lesser deities subordinated. With the beginnings of shamanism there was the advent of the medicine man or witch doctor, who assumed a supervisory relation to disease and its cure. Formally, shamanism is a religion of Ural-Altaic peoples of Northern Asia and Europe, characterized by the belief that the unseen world of gods, demons, ancestral spirits is responsive only to shamans. The Indians of North and South America entertain religious practices similar to the Ural-Altaic shamanism. The word shaman comes from the Tungusic (Manchuria and Siberia) saman, meaning Buddhist monk. The shaman handles disease almost entirely by psychotherapeutic means; he frightens away the demons of disease by assuming a terrifying mien. (From Garrison, An Introduction to the History of Medicine, 4th ed, p22; from Webster, 3d ed)

Medicine, Traditional Medical Definitions and Terms

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