Medicine, Traditional—Central Asia
Since the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991, health care and pharmaceutical industries in the Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan have collapsed. The Semashko model of health organization, named after the first minister of health in Soviet Russia, featured total state authority and control; significant centralization of administration, planning, and financing; and free-of-charge medical assistance at the point of delivery. Now health care providers receive very low salaries, resulting in poor motivation and morale. Malpractice and substantial under-the-counter payments are widespread, causing public pessimism and distrust of hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies in both rural and urban settings.
With the collapse of centralized health care, citizens of the Central Asian states are increasingly turning to traditional or folk medicines to cure common colds, minor infections, and other ailments. Centers for the study and understanding of folk medicine are opening throughout Central Asia. The centers serve as teaching clinics where patients seek alternative medical treatments from folk healers and their apprentices. Sufferers also tap into Central Asia's rich medicinal texts, both modern and historical, which focus on the local flora and fauna as remedies for ills. These books are being published at increasing rates for the use of clinics or medical cooperatives in Central Asian cities.
Heritage of Central Asian Traditional Medicine
Traditional medicine in Central Asia draws on a rich and diverse heritage, bringing together spiritual and empirical elements. Bridging Europe and Asia, Central Asia has been exposed to medical knowledge from a variety of regions near and far. Closely allied with popular religious beliefs, spiritual medicine reflected both pre-Islamic shamanist traditions and Islamic practices before the Soviet period. Shamans and mullahs served as medical practitioners by fighting to expel the evil spirits that Central Asian folk believed lay at the root of disease. Folk doctors, for their part, relied on observable phenomena and treated ailments by using locally available plant and animal products. Despite Soviet rule, knowledge accumulated over hundreds of years passed from generation to generation, enhanced by information about remedies that had met with success in China, Tibet, India, and the Near East. These studies are manifested in current remedies. Central Asians saw folk doctors not in opposition to shamans and mullahs, but as members of allied medical fields.
Animal Remedies
Before the Soviets came to power, Central Asians used not only herbs but also animals in traditional medicine. For example, to treat syphilis Kazakhs burned the entire skeleton of a wolf and ground the ashes into a powder, which was applied to the patient's sores. In cases of fever Kazakhs rubbed sheep liver on the patient's body or beat him or her with the lungs of a sheep or goat. To treat the common cold, the patient was placed in a tub filled with hot water and sheep entrails, which were supposed to promote sweating the illness out of the person's system. Central Asians treated cutaneous anthrax, a natural infectious disease characterized by skin ulcerations, by tying a string around the leg of a live frog, fastening the frog to the patient, and placing it directly on the sores. In a few minutes the frog supposedly suffocated, and its stomach turned black. The process was then repeated with four or five more frogs, after which the wound was rubbed with oil. Allegedly, after several days, the sores disappeared altogether. Bridging both the Soviet era and the present, perhaps the animal product most widely used in traditional medicine is koumiss, or fermented mare's milk. In the Central Asian nomadic cultures, koumiss is readily available as an effective measure to maintain good health and as a successful treatment for a variety of illnesses, such as alleviating colds and the flu.
Plant Remedies
Central Asian herbal medicine is allopathic, not homeopathic. Homeopathy treats diseases by using herbs that would induce in a healthy person symptoms similar to those the disorder causes in the sick person; allopathy induces effects opposed to the symptoms. Plant remedies are typically prepared by brewing a tea made from dried herbs and roots gathered in the mountains and plains. Mint is a frequently used ingredient to soothe the mouth and throat. Central Asians also distill herbs and roots in water or koumiss and distribute the result in ointment form. These herbal solutions are used to treat, among other things, fevers, diarrhea, headaches, psychological afflictions and STDs, namely syphilis. Central Asians use strong black tea to treat headaches, a remedy that is effective because caffeine constricts blood vessels, thereby alleviating pain. For swellings, the ground roots of wild nettles are placed directly on the inflammation. A mild narcotic used to treat the common cold, nasybai, is administered under the tongue in a form akin to chewing tobacco. Central Asians use opium and nasybai as painkillers.
Government's Role in Traditional Medicine
The Central Asian governments support traditional medicine as a supplement, not a replacement, for modern medicine. Groups such as Avicenna, named after the famous Islamic medical scholar Ibn Sina (980–1037), promote clinics and publish journals on how to use traditional medicines to encourage good physical and mental health. In Central Asia's scientific laboratories, with government encouragement scientists are completing clinical trials of traditional medicinal preparations. Tinctures, ointments, granules, and powders, made from local herbal raw materials, are being developed. The new medicines include healing remedies (bentonite and iodine powder, tincture of Japanese safara), and antidiabetic preparations (beans and vigna granules). Central Asians also use minerals such as iodine-sulfuric powder to get rid of skin diseases. Overall, Central Asians use traditional medicines in response to their growing inability to manufacture modern pharmaceuticals.
Further Reading
Abdi, W. H., M.S. Asimov, and A.K. Bag (1990) Interaction between Indian and Central Asian Science and Technology. Vols. 1 and 2. New Delhi: Indian National Science Academy.
Elgood, Cyril. (1979) A Medical History of Persia and the Eastern Caliphate. Amsterdam: APA-Philo Press.
Hoizey, Dominique, and Marie-Joseph Hoizey. (1993) A History of Chinese Medicine. Vancouver, Canada: University of British Columbia Press.
Kamal, Hasan. (1975) Encyclopaedia of Islamic Medicine. Cairo, Egypt: General Egyptian Book Organization.
Karryev, M. O. (1991) Farmakokhimiia lekarstvennykh rastenii Turkmenistana (Pharmo-Chemical Medicines of Turkmenistan's Plants). Ashkhabad, Turkmenistan: Bylym.
Michaels, Paula. (1998) "Medical Traditions, Kazak Women, and Soviet Medical Politics to 1941." Nationalities Papers 26, 3: 493–509.
Rahman, Fazlur. (1998) Health and Medicine in the Islamic Tradition. Chicago: ABC International Group.
Ullman, Manfred. (1997) Islamic Medicine. Edinburgh, U.K.: Edinburgh University Press.
Yanjuan, Wang, Ying Huang, and Richard R. Pearce. (1997) Sun Zi's Art of War and Health Care. Beijing: New World Press.
This is the complete article, containing 1,068 words
(approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page).
