A "Believe It or Not" Episode of Medical Conquests by the Indigenous Peoples of South America and the African Descendants Domiciled Mainly in Tobago

Abstract

Except for the professional work conducted by a few adventurous anthropologists such as Roth (1970) and Johannes (1963), little is actually known about the great impact that the Warao of north eastern Venezuela and the Guajiro of Zulia State near to Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela, have made on both allopathic and traditional medicine in the modern world. During my undergraduate years at the University of the West Indies in St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago, I ventured out to Venezuela in search of 'food' for my 'hungry' Caribbean Studies paper. Years later, during my postgraduate years in the United States of America (USA), I found similar 'food' to whet the appetite of my research paper on the incidence and management of diabetes mellitus among the Guajiro Indians and I discovered that in spite of the geographical and topographical differences in the physical locations of these two ethnic groups, there still exist remarkable similarities in their food intake, lifestyle, traditional beliefs, family ties and customs. In my sojourns through relatively remote parts of Venezuela and during the course of my social interludes with these great people, I discovered that they were almost totally non-dependent on modern medical personnel and modern medicine within their immediate environment. The Warao, also known as the 'Boat people', survive on the fauna of the tributaries of the vast Orinoco River and the flora of the dense jungle that yield fresh vegetation and other foods that are loaded with a myriad of botanical and nutritional cures.