22 Solving Health Problems
What Is
the Best
Treatment?
Is a treatment helpful or harmful?
Although Don Pedro was certain that medicines would solve
the problem, Juanita wanted more information before deciding
on a treatment. She knew, for example, that home remedies
had often helped her mother and grandmother when they
were ill. Why, then, did the remedies she had tried fail to work?
Here is Don Pedro’s explanation:
Every community has developed
remedies for solving health
problems. Home remedies and
modern medicine can both be
helpful if practiced carefully and
correctly. But remember that
both home remedies and modern
medicines can be helpful, can be
harmless, and can also be harmful.
In Juanita’s case, she had used all 3 kinds of remedies:
Corn silk tea would have been very
helpful if Juanita had an infection of the
urine system. This is because corn silk
tea makes a person pass urine more and
so flushes germs out of the body. But
these teas probably did not help Juanita
because her infection was not in the
urine system.
Wrapping plant medicines around
the belly is a harmless remedy.
It will not make a health problem
worse, because the medicines
stay outside the body, but it will
not help, either.
Putting plant medicines into the
vagina is harmful and should
never be done. Plant medicines
can irritate the vagina and cause
dangerous infections.
Where Women Have No Doctor 2012