Developments in Brief : ‘Medicine People’ Go to Work in Hospitals

The use of “medicine people” and traditional American Indian healing methods is finding acceptance among some modern health-care professionals, according to those who practice the ancient creeds.

“Perhaps traditional Indian medicine is the art of nursing, rather than just the science,” said Ann Hubbert, director of patient care at St. Mary’s Catholic Hospital and Health Center in Tucson, Ariz.

Three years ago, the hospital hired medicine man Edgar Monetathchi Jr., becoming the first hospital in the nation to incorporate Indian healing with modern medicine.

Practitioners consider Indian healing a holistic medicine, an approach that relies on a patient’s mental state as much as physical treatment to relieve ills.

“Holistic practices are not alternative medicine, they are part of the whole practice of medicine,” Hubbert added last week at an international conference in Fresno of Indian “medicine people” and health-care professionals.

Participants in 13 conferences St. Mary’s has organized in the last three years have come from as far away as Mexico and Europe, Hubbert said.