the healer
The Act of Healing and Colonial Society
Throughout David Sowell’s The Tale of Healer Miguel Perdomo Niera both religion and the science of healing are questioned and compared. Miguel Perdomo Niera was an unlicensed doctor who used science and religion to heal his patience. Many of whom could not pay for a doctor in town or had and not been cured until Niera had treated them. This created much disbelief in the medical world. Questions were aroused, how could a man use old Indian religious techniques to cure these people? A curandero at heart through experience in war time he was able to gain surgical training but how was he so effective? All of these questions have one thing in common the people that he healed were eternally grateful and the people that questioned him, questioned him more with every successful healing. All of these people were impacted by the actual act of healing through medical , scientific, religious, and spiritual means these peninsular’s, creoles, and natives found themselves questioning how this was possible. Throughout history in Latin America healers have been influential people Niera may not have gone to school to heal people but through his use of Spirituality as well as practical means he left us to question today the relationship of healing to a society in late colonial and early modern Latin America.
The act of healing for a society can mean many different things. The meaning of the healing may change with the different way that people are healed; this can be mentally or physically. The largest implications however can happen with the use of religion as well as medicines. People may become fanatical followers or questioning pessimists. “Confrontations erupted early Monday May 13, between Perdomistas and supporters of the local medical community”1 This is due to the partly miraculous work done by the healer especially at the specific time that Miguel Perdomo Niera was becoming a curandero. Curanderos were healer who used both spiritual
Throughout David Sowell’s The Tale of Healer Miguel Perdomo Niera both religion and the science of healing are questioned and compared. Miguel Perdomo Niera was an unlicensed doctor who used science and religion to heal his patience. Many of whom could not pay for a doctor in town or had and not been cured until Niera had treated them. This created much disbelief in the medical world. Questions were aroused, how could a man use old Indian religious techniques to cure these people? A curandero at heart through experience in war time he was able to gain surgical training but how was he so effective? All of these questions have one thing in common the people that he healed were eternally grateful and the people that questioned him, questioned him more with every successful healing. All of these people were impacted by the actual act of healing through medical , scientific, religious, and spiritual means these peninsular’s, creoles, and natives found themselves questioning how this was possible. Throughout history in Latin America healers have been influential people Niera may not have gone to school to heal people but through his use of Spirituality as well as practical means he left us to question today the relationship of healing to a society in late colonial and early modern Latin America.
The act of healing for a society can mean many different things. The meaning of the healing may change with the different way that people are healed; this can be mentally or physically. The largest implications however can happen with the use of religion as well as medicines. People may become fanatical followers or questioning pessimists. “Confrontations erupted early Monday May 13, between Perdomistas and supporters of the local medical community”1 This is due to the partly miraculous work done by the healer especially at the specific time that Miguel Perdomo Niera was becoming a curandero. Curanderos were healer who used both spiritual