Today Western Medicine is regarded worldwide as the most effective system of physical healing. This was not always the case. In the Middle Ages, Eastern medicines, medical techniques and doctors were regarded as far more effective and sophisticated than which existed in the West. During the Crusades, for instance, when King Richard the Lion Heart was ill and on the verge of death, Salahudin, the Kurdish Muslim general who was fighting Richard, sent him his personal physician whose treatment was able to restore Richard to health.

The Eastern Civilizations had developed their own complete systems of medicine which influenced each other and whose pharmacopoeias were all based largely on flora. The main systems in the ancient world were the Arab System, the Chinese System and the Ayurvedic System in India. and they were all respected worldwide and had numerous successes. But with the great scientific progress in the 19th and 20th centuries and with the detailed study of the human body. Western Medicine deservedly earned a universal trust and acceptability which none questioned.

From about the middle of the last century, however, the Western Scientific community recognized the validity of the Eastern Systems and that much could be learnt from them in enriching their own System. Thus many Ayurvedic herbs and spices were rigorously tested and analysed and found to be medicinally helpful. Among these were turmeric, ginger, black pepper, cinnamon, neem and other herbs came to be adopted in secondary Western pharmacopoeia, And so have techniques such as Yoga and Acupuncture.

In Guyana, Western Medicine has continued to predominate, and the population have an unshakable belief in it. Yet, underground, there has always existed a body of folk medicines called by various names such as “bush medicines”, “tree medicines” and “alternative medicines” which drew its source from the medicines and medical practices used by the Amerindian peoples, and the African and Indian slaves and indentured labourers who populated the country between the 16th and 19th centuries. This corpus of folk medicines and practices has a wide clientele who use both Western as well as “bush medicines’ as they are generically called. These bush medicines could be obtained everywhere but especially in the markets.
These vendors were immortalized in the “Weed song” sung by Bill Rogers in the 1920s where he names some of the bushes sold:
Man peeyaba, woman peeyaba
Taan-taan fall back and granny backbone
Bitter tally, lime leaf and turu
Putagee Bumba, Conga Lana and twelve o’clock broom
Miniroot, gullyroot and the ocean iron weed …
If one visits the Stabroek and Bourda markets, the vendors are still there, but the names they use for their bushes are less colourful than a century ago when Bill Rogers sung. The vendors sell various herbal teas for various disorders as well as specific bushes to cure specific diseases such as blood pressures, early breast cancer, diabetes, kidney and urinary problems, digestive problems, fevers, pains and so on.. The bushes on offer would include carilla bush, sweet sage, saijan seeds, mint, toyo, lemon grass, sour grass, pear leaf, sweet broom, various kinds of barks like capadilla for sexual prowess. Almost all vendors now have mixtures or extracts of the various bushes bottled.

Over the years, several persons have organized groups of bush medicine practitioners and bush medicine vendors into groups but the most well-known is the ‘Guyana Association for Alternative Medicine Institute’ run by Dr Iamei Aomathi and an Amerindian group known as Medicine from Trees.
Despite individuals claiming that they have been cured or relieved from many diseases by bush medicines, no comprehensive research has been done into how many people have been cured over a specific period, the type of diseases, the actual bush used, periods used, etc. Accordingly, using bush medicine could be a risk to health since the user would lack basic knowledge of many things he/she should know about the bush. before ingesting it.
In the last quarter of last year, Dr Joseph Haynes, a well-known practitioner of both Western and Alternative Medicine, gave an interview to one of the dailies. After emphatically reminding that most of the drugs in the world were formulated from plants, he spoke of some of the pitfalls of using bush medicines without proper direction and controls: “You don’t use bush like that and call it medicine. .all persons practising bush medicine must be trained, certified and monitored so that the right dosage, age group and other criteria are considered . . . we don’t know under what conditions these medicines are prepared; we don’t know the water they use to extract the drug from whatever bush they are using; we don’t know the combination of how many leaves they are using. . . And further, we don’ t have regulations in place that would have had the medicine tested, certified and proven that it will work for whatever condition it is said it will work for”. In other words, there is a risk in using bush medicines in the present uncontrolled conditions.
There is certainly an immediate need for some Regulation of the bush medicine trade. Far more fundamentally, there is a need for scientific research into the drugs the bushes contain, the methods of extraction, the quantities to be used by a patient and the effects on the patient. before Government were to give its recognition and imprimatur on bushes and bush medicine practitioners.