Bush Medicine
When the African’s made the gruesome voyage to the New World, many ties with Africa were severed. There were, however, some aspects of their African cultural heritage that remained. One such remaining vestige can be seen in the Bahamas through the use of Bush Medicine. Bush Medicine refers to a homeopathic cure made of local plants.
About Bush Medicine
- "Oral histories provide the best information about bush medicine, including which practices remain widely known and used, and which have fallen out of favor and are in danger of being lost as the current elderly population dies." Quoted from Comparing alternative landscapes: Power negotiations in enslaved communities in Louisiana and the Bahamas, an archaeological and historical perspective (Dissertation) by Nesta Jean Anderson.
- "Bush medicine is usually used for sickness, such as fevers and colds, flus, pain, constipation, rashes, and cuts Plants generally have three curative parts: the leaves and stems, the bark, and the roots. The roots are the strongest in medicinal properties." Quoted from Comparing alternative landscapes: Power negotiations in enslaved communities in Louisiana and the Bahamas, an archaeological and historical perspective (Dissertation) by Nesta Jean Anderson.
- "Regardless of what secret doctors, healers, or others used in treating illness, the behavior of enslaved people treating their own maladies, or protecting themselves through amulets or bush medicine, is a form of resistance …. Such acts of resistance might be seen through using herbs to make one sick enough to get out of work or even using medicine to induce abortion or commit suicide." Quoted from Comparing alternative landscapes: Power negotiations in enslaved communities in Louisiana and the Bahamas, an archaeological and historical perspective (Dissertation) by Nesta Jean Anderson.
- "Only in the most extreme and incurable cases would they resort to extreme measures, to ascribe irreversible decline and death to a medicine more powerful than their own or to hand over their patient to their rival white doctors for “civilized” medicine—including radical surgery." Quoted from Islanders in the Stream: A History of the Bahamian People (From the Ending of Slavery to the Twenty-First Century) by Michael Craton and Gail Saunders.
- "The use of bush remedies was most prevalent in Out Island settlements that rarely, if ever, were visited by a physician. But most black Nassuvians also sought cures or palliatives from medicinal plants, developing an indigenous pharmacopeia… Nearly every native plant—the majority of course not known in Africa—was ascribed a medicinal value, and many were used with ‘great faith.’" Quoted from Islanders in the Stream: A History of the Bahamian People (From the Ending of Slavery to the Twenty-First Century) by Michael Craton and Gail Saunders.