Health Tourism in the New World

Native Americans throughout the New World were adept in various aspects of the healing arts.  In fact, their catalog of therapeutic plants rivaled much of what was known back in Europe, Africa, and Asia at that time.  Sadly, many opportunities for sharing and learning were squandered as the early settlers focused their efforts on securing land rather than on building relationships.  Who knows what medical advancements would have surfaced if more constructive communication had taken place between Native Americans and European settlers? 

What we know about spiritual healers, shamans, witchdoctors, and ritualistic healing is but a small scattering of all the knowledge that once existed throughout the Americas.  Even still, medical tourism managed to develop as desperate colonists and settlers frequently turned to local healers in last ditch efforts for recovery.  To this day, various branches of alternative medicine flourish as historians and believers uncover the many ancient healing arts of the New World.  

In the 1600s, English and Dutch colonists in the newly "discovered" Americas constructed log cabins near mineral springs that were rich in medicinal properties.  By the 19^th century, free-thinking American reformists had developed a habit of traveling to remote Western springs, presumably to drink and soak in the bubbly hot and cold springs while pondering the future of modern civilization.

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