I thought the presentation on the small pox was great!I thought it was very interesting to see how the English and other western nations were able to take control of the Americas because of disease. I firmly believe if they did not have this advantage the country would net be where it is today.
I did not know the Indians quarantined people either. That is something I would have never known if not for this presentation. If the english would have used this method centuries ago many of the problems they encountered with disease would not have happened.
I find it interesting too, that the Indians had much better medicine than the western powers. Obviously bleeding was not an effective way of treating serious illness and disease.
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i also thought the smallpox presentation was very informative. I thought it was ironic that the Europeans, who obviously saw themselves as a more advanced people than the indians, actually had the more archaic medical techniques. i got a kick out of that.
Jake Thibodeau
I also thought that this presentation was interesting!! It is always interesting to see the ways in which other populations veiw what is happening to them and how they explain it. It is interesting to see how the Native population was actually better at fighting the disease than were the Europeans. I know I said this on another post, but to see how they were trying to fight the disease shows that they were not unintelligent and in fact were trying to take charge of what was happening to them. I think too often the indians are portrayed in a way that makes them seem like they are at the mercy of the invaders and simply let things happen to them, but this shows they are smart people who try to take actions to ensure their survival.
I found the part about native medical techniques to be most interesting in particular. I've read many articles in my other studies that has actually compared various native, or "Shaman" medical techniques from the Amazon to our present day knowledge and medicines. It alarmed me to discover that the native techniques where just as if not more effective than our current day solutions. With the continued conquest of the Amazon rainforest and decline in native peoples, this simple, natural knowledge will probably be lost forever.
Yeah, I really liked the part about the quarintine. I also thought it was really cool that their medicine was much more advanced than the Europeans. I dont know why we always learned that they were so uncivilized and stupid, when this is clearly not the case.
I never knew that Native peoples actually treated the Europeans for diseases. We always here that Europeans show up and kill all the Native Peoples and that what the Native People do is in response to the Evil Europeans.
I agree that disease was influential in the European conquest of the America's. I thought it very interesting that even though the Europeans had traveled so far for so long they still were unaware of the medical treatments available at the time for certain remenedies. A discouraging point was how fast that disease would decimate these populations in such a fast time.
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