Medicine

The herbs collected by women and children formed the basis of Inca medicine. Herbal healing during Inca times was very much like it is today. Few Andes villages have doctors or access to regular medical care, so understanding the healing properties of natural herbs is imperative for good health. In Inca times experienced medical personnel consisted of old women knowledgeable about the use of herbs, and doctors who knew how to staunch bleeding, amputate limbs on battlefields, and heal illness. A group of wandering healers, called

The Rainbow

In Black Rainbow, author John Bierhorst presents selected myths and legends of the Andes that have survived to this day. The following excerpt explains the creation of a rainbow, a powerful symbol in Inca times and a common source of interest to today's Andean people.

When the sun comes up and a mist is in the air and the whole sky is brilliant, then from a natural fountain the rainbow is born, stretching forth in an enormous arc.

But it fears the people on earth; their faces are much too lively, and it draws itself back through the sky like a braided rope of many colors.

There were once some little boys who set out to find its feet. But its toes are made of crystal and it always hides them. So the little boys were unable to find what they were looking for and they threw stones at the rainbow.

When the rainbow enters the body of a man or woman, then the person becomes gravely ill. But the sick person will be cured if he unravels a ball of yarn made of seven colors.

Collahuayas, who came from Lake Titicaca, were so skilled that they treated the royal family.

Inca medicine evolved separately from European and Far Eastern medicine, yet Inca healers pursued two medical procedures that were common in Europe and the Orient: bloodletting and trepanning. Inca cronista Garcilaso de la Vega describes bloodletting, which probably killed many people: “[The Incas] considered bleeding and purges to be beneficial. They bled both arms and legs, not from the vein that was probably to be effective in the case of this or that illness, but from one that seemed to them to be nearest the point of the patient’s suffering. When they had a headache, they bled their foreheads, at the spot where the eyebrows