Medical Swadeshi

Faith, knowledge, and quick thinking are my medical insurance company. Faith is a personal development, religious or otherwise. Knowledge is a shared practice. Quick thinking is gained through experience, personality, and study.

What injuries require professional medical attention? What injuries and ailments can be successfully cured at home? The answer to both of these questions depends on your level of faith and knowledge. When in doubt (faithless), seek out help. When clueless (without knowledge), you'll act foolish.

What happens when you do not have immediate access to professional medical attention? What happens when you do not have medical insurance? What happens when you prefer to treat ailments without modern medical inputs? What happens when as a people, we loose knowledge of how to treat injuries from our natural surroundings? What happens when you are allergic to the side affects of a medication? What happens when you don't know the alternatives? What happens when medical knowledge is lost to the common people?

Many of these questions are addressed in books like "Where There is No Doctor", herbal guides, and folk remedy stories. These books are treasures. Golden trinkets of knowledge that would otherwise have been lost in the hierarchial structure of our modern world.

This Medicinal Swadeshi page is a place for people to share their experiences with these remedies; a place for people to document what they have learned in books; for others to confirm or deny what actually worked for them. All entries should be referenced to a written source or noted as a personal anecdote. If retelling a story you heard, say so. If you experienced something directly, say so. If you are not sure what the cause of something was, but you attribute it to x,y, or z, say so.

First Aid

• Life-threatening injuries
  • Choking
  • Head/Spinal Injury
  • Unconsciousness
  • Venomous bites
  • severe allergic reaction
• Skin
  • Cuts, infected cuts
  • Bruises
  • Splinters
  • Burns and Rashes, stings
• Bones,muscles,tendons
  • Broken Bones
  • Out of socket
  • Strain, sprain
• Eyes, Ears, Mouth, Nose
  • Infections
  • Cancer sores
  • Nose bleed
  • Toothache
• Internal
  • Food poisoning
  • Constipation
  • Diarrhea
  • Ingested poisoning
• Lung/throat/congestion
  • Flu/Cold
  • Headache
  • Asthma
  • Sore throat
  • Allergies
• Other
  • Vaginal infection
  • Hemorrhoids
  • Scalp flake
  • In-grown nail
  • Urinary tract infection
  • Hypothermia
  • Dehydration

Prevention

Sophisticated medical treatment is too complex and specialized to be provided on a village scale, but such treatment is the less important half of a duo whose other member is prevention. Treatment is often complex and tricky, but prevention is generally low-tech and requires nothing that cannot be obtained on a local scale.

It is beyond the scope of this wiki to give comprehensive strategies for preventing disease (there are plenty of websites that do a great job of this already), but it is worth making the point that for all the major diseases, we already have the solutions. We don't have curative solutions, but we do have preventive ones. The biggest plagues on humanity are all preventable: cancer (anti-angiogenic foods, garlic, turmeric, medicinal mushrooms), cardiovascular disease (omega-3, avoiding trans-fats, exercise), infectious diseases (hygiene), Alzheimer's (meditation and turmeric), osteoporosis (weightbearing exercise, calcium and vitamin D), type-II diabetes (exercise, avoiding sugar), lung cancer (the obvious), dementia (keeping mentally active, meditation) and others.

• Preventive Medicine Research Institute
• Andrew Weil
• Eat to Starve Cancer - anti-angiogenic foods