From Point of Light Magazine, Fall 1997
MY ENCOUNTER WITH A MEDICINE MAN
by Dan Wagner
Along the Napo River, deep in the forests of the Amazon Basin in Northeastern Peru, daily life is intertwined between the outlandish and the surreal.
The jungle is alive with numerous exotic plants and uncommon animals and insects found in few other places in the world. The brawny, jet-black tapir, a relative of the rhinoceros, scurries across a tea-colored stream. The capybaras, the world's largest rodent, strolls into camp looking for a morsel. Screaming black spider monkeys loom in the canopy overhead. The vampire bat and scorpion abound here, as does the tarantula, the python, and the anaconda.
But for all the potential dangers lurking behind each tree in the forest, there is an unspoken solace in knowing the local medicine man lives nearby in an Indian village. He has cures for many illnesses and diseases that fixate the body, as well as the supernatural.
No wonder that Don Antonio Montero, a local Ribereno Indian shaman that I met during our expedition, was a man most revered among the community of indigenous Indians who lived near the Explorama Camp (about a four hour river boat ride down the Amazon River from Iquitos, Peru). The 5-foot 2-inch shaman was a soft spoken man of few words but was revered for his acute knowledge of plants and the potent medicines that can be derived from them.
Meeting the Man
On a working retreat headed by internationally-noted ethnobotanist, Dr. Mark Plotkin, our small group of fourteen traveled from our camp along the Napo River and hiked about two miles into the deep forest to his jungle ceremonial site (or shaman's curing grounds). Here there were erected four modest huts encircling a fireplace and a table. The shaman had a dozen or so plants and herbs sitting on the table and he was mixing them in a large pot that was sitting on the open fire. Don Antonio was a medicine man particularly skilled in administering one powerful plant/drug called ayahuasca. This plant is the so-called "vine of death," a potent hallucinogen that is used to summon and conjure the spirit world to aid in certain healing rituals. In fact, Don Antonio was resistant to let our team take pictures of the ceremonial site for fear that the spirits would be affected. However, our guide and interpreter, Dr. Plotkin, assured the shaman that we were a group of health professionals, not tourists, who came to learn about his brand of medicine. Don Antonio consented to a few photographs.
The shaman was preparing a batch of ayahuasca to treat a local tribal woman who had been afflicted with recurrent "bad dreams." That evening, after the mixture had cooked for 12 hours, he would drink the potion with the woman, stay with her all through the night, and hopefully cure her by morning.
Although ayahuasca may be the most powerful plant the old shaman uses, it is only one of hundreds in his plant medicine arsenal. Many of his potions have been used by forest people and city dwellers alike, for these time-tested therapies have been passed down from generations of medicine men from eons ago. One of Don Antonio's favorite plant medicines is Bellaco capsi, which produces a white latex that is plastered on tumors, hernias, and slow-healing wounds. Another is the oil derived from the fruit tree Andiroba which is effective for coughs. And then there is the Cedro odorata tree, whose bitter bark is used as a remedy for colds, fever and diarrhea.
In kind, many of the remedies used in the Peruvian Amazon are familiar plants to us that have recently found new and significant use in the United States and Western Europe. An orange latex tree called Vismia angusta, used in treating herpes and ringworm fungi, is in the St. John's Wort family. St. John's Wort is now widely used in the West to treat mild and moderate depression and is an authentic herbal alternative to Prozac. Curarea toxicofera, a vine growing along many trails in the Amazon forest, has produced the drug curare, a potent muscle relaxant found in every modern hospital emergency room. Even today some remote Indian tribes, including the Yagua Indians, who I got to visit one afternoon, still use curare for arrow-tip poison. The victim of the deadly poison, usually a spider of howler monkey, dies from massive cardiac arrest in seconds after being pierced. The Peruvian "vine-of-life," Una de Gata or Catsclaw, first was used by the Riberenos Indians for kidney and liver detoxification and arthritis. However, the amazing immuno-stimulant effects of this plant were soon discovered by Westerners, and within a few years it was being extensively used as an "underground" drug by AIDS patients whose immune-suppressed disease was benefited by taking this drug. Today, Catsclaw is available in every health food store in the country. One of the world's truly great drugs, quinine, was first discovered a few hundred years ago right in the neighborhood where I stayed. Of course, quinine is used to treat malaria or intermittent fever - the greatest single killer of human beings in all of history.
There are a myriad of other plant's medicines that have become useful to modern science by the efforts of these healers. And there are still hundreds of tribal medicine men like Don Antonio throughout the vast rain forests of Central and South America. However, the number of young people willing to commit to the arduous life of the shaman or village healer is dwindling at a provocative rate. Beset by strong influences of Western clothes, music, money and lifestyles, young people only want to emulate Americans, who they all see as being wealthy movie stars. In addition, a disconcerting number of zealots and fundamentalist missionaries are careening up and down the river system of the rain forest in search of converts. Besides their promise to save their souls, many of the missionaries convince the indigenous people to "do away" with the old medicines (wrought by evil spirits) and begin to embrace Western medicine. What frequently ensues is that one or two generations adopt the new medicines, and years later when the new-found religion has lost its luster and the people wish to revert to the traditional ways, many of the old healers have passed on and the old medicine has been forgotten.
A New Approach
It might seem strange but the U. S. corporations and pharmaceutical manufacturers are beginning to stake their future on this medicine man and others like him. After an absence of nearly forty years in concerted research into drugs derived from natural sources, pharmaceutical firms have come back to the forest to seek new discoveries and new profits. New technological developments have made easy, rapid, and cost effective screening of tropical plants possible. This has prompted renewed interest in the rain forest, and medical scientists are once again reevaluating plants for insights in developing new drugs.
Albert Einstein once said, "Chance favors the prepared mind." Researchers and medical scientists know that indigenous populations have unique knowledge of the forest's medicinal properties. Ethnobotanists are the most qualified professionals to attain and document the knowledge of the medicine men (frequently their knowledge is never written down and if they die before an apprentice can be fully trained, then it is as if the only library has burned down - all knowledge is lost forever.)
Surely it is important to determine the potential for tropical natural products not only because the drug companies have to make a profit, but some of the revenues that can be accrued must go back to the forest and contribute to conservation and the preservation of the indigenous people who live there. This is exciting and worthwhile work for the men and women who work as mediators between the rain forest, its people, and the drug manufacturers. It has been my distinct privilege to have worked beside some of the foremost scientists and ethnobotanists that have strived to keep the secrets of the shamans alive. In fact, now is the time to act. We sadly stand at a precipice where the real danger of losing the knowledge of the shamans is a stark and bleak reality. If the greatest part of this valuable knowledge is not collected and documented in the next twenty years, I fear that it will be lost forever. Because it is my fervent belief, as well as that of many others, that these people have a lot to teach US.
Jungle Spirituality
There is an uncanny similarity to shamanism in Central and South America, and parts of Africa. Although the language is different, and often different plants are used, there is a common thread of spirituality and prayer among healers that gives unprecedented respect to all life forms: plant, animal, mineral, or human. This is very important. The gifted individuals that I have met, who could easily be scorned by Western belief systems as drug-laced witch doctors and magicians, have shown to me nothing but love and caring for their people and the forest. Some other religious critics would label them as heathens because they do not practice a standard Western religion. Nothing could be further from the truth. These gentle men and women have deep values and have taught me so much about life, medicine, the art of healing, environmental stewardship, and true comradeship. But above all else, they have taught me what spirituality was all about. In the mighty industrialized countries, like America and Western Europe, we can say we have religion, and perhaps we do ... but do we have spirituality? I think not.
The difference between religion and spirituality could be interpreted in many ways and certainly each person's belief should be based on his or her own perception. For me, I experienced things that helped me attain a higher and more enlightened level of connection between my own body, mind and spirit - and the earth. For example, if a particular plant in the forest is medicinally used for parasites, and is prepared by making a tea, the healer would attest that the plant would not work as a medicine unless the proper prayer was spoken as the plant was being pulled from the ground. The prayer may be prayed to God, Jesus, the Blessed mother, Ix Chel, the Maya goddess of healing, or the Four Winds. It doesn't matter for it is not for us to judge. In another example, when an animal is sacrificed for the evening meal, prayers of thanksgiving are not said to God or to a deity, but fervently spoken to the animal's spirit for having willingly given up its life to sustain theirs.
In all, there is a symbiotic relationship and spiritual bond between many of the people of the forest and their environment. Their acuity to the sights, sounds, smells, and vibrations of their environment is uncanny. This inner connectiveness goes well beyond the physical and most surely embraces the spiritual dimension. For me it has been and continues to be a learning experience of the highest order, and my desire to dwell more in the awe and wonder of it all seems to be a noble pursuit and a worthy passion.
Dan Wagner has traveled extensively in the last 4 years working with eco-pharmacists and ethnobotanists to help preserve and document the traditional wisdom of the shamans and indigenous healers that live in the world's few remaining rain forests. In April, he opened a new vitamin/herbal/homeopathic/nutritional pharmacy, called "Nutri-Farmacy, " located in Wildwood, PA near North Park He was recipient of the "Pennsylvania Pharmacist of the Year for 1996, " presented by Pennsylvania Pharmacists Association. You can reach him at (412) 486-8595 or (412) 486-4588.
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