Medicine
The Maya in common with other Mesoamerican
groups believed that illnesses could have both natural and supernatural causes.
To treat illnesses due to natural causes the healers first determined the
symptoms and then made use of the vast supply of natural cures available
(animal, mineral and plant), prescribed in a variety of different forms.
Amongst these were infusions, poultices and ointments. Hundreds of recipes used
to cure many aches and pains have been collected from colonial documents, and a
great number of these prehispanic remedies were still used today and their
effectiveness is well proven.
Illnesses caused the “bad winds”
or by enemies, those provoked by failure to fulfill religious obligations or
for any other unknown reasons were considered to have magic or supernatural
origins. It was also necessary to cure them by these means. The Ritual of
the Bacabs, a manuscript written in Maya and translated into English,
records many spells as well as medical prescriptions. Cure by faith healers (brujos)
is still a common practice today for sicknesses of supernatural origin. (Alberto
Rus Lhuillier, The Ancient Maya [trans. Margaret Shrimpton; Mérida, Mexico: Dante, 1992], 53-54)
