Discuss 19th century philosophy and practice of healing. Be sure to explain what a shaman is, shamanism, and Ebers Papyrus

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answer: Individuals with prior knowledge about such plants, as well as about plants with therapeutic powers, would eventually acquire great power over others in the community. In a wide range of world cultures throughout history, hallucinogens have been regarded as having deeply spiritual powers. Under the influence of drugs, this modern-day shaman communicates with the spirit world. This knowledge was the beginning of shamanism, a practice among primitive societies dating back, by some estimates, more than 40,000 years, in which an individual called a shaman acts as a healer through a combination of trances and plant-based medicines, usually in the context of a local religious rite. Shamans still function today in remote areas of the world, often alongside practitioners of modern medicine, and hallucination-producing plants still play a major role in present-day shamanic healing.

The power to heal through one's knowledge of drugs passed into the hands of the priesthood, which placed a greater emphasis on formal rituals and rules than on hallucinations and trances.

The most extensive testament to the development of priestly healing during this period is a 65-foot-long Egyptian scroll known as the Ebers Papyrus, named after the British Egyptologist who acquired it in 1872. This mammoth document contains more than eight hundred prescriptions for practically every ailment imaginable, including simple wasp
stings and crocodile bites, baldness, constipation, headaches, enlarged prostate glands, sweaty feet, arthritis, inflammations of all types, heart disease, and cancer.

More than a hundred of the preparations contained castor oil as a natural laxative. Some contained the "berry of the poppy," which is now recognized as referring to opium. Other ingredients were quite bizarre: lizard's blood, the teeth of swine, the oil of worms, the hoof of
an ass, putrid meat with fly specks, and crocodile dung (excrement of all types being highly favored for its ability to frighten off the evil spirits of disease).