Journey of the Medicine Wheel, and Healing for the Mind, Body, Emotion and Spirit to Today
Prior to the success of the Spanish conquistadors, the Inca Empire (or, Tawantinsuyu in the Quechua language) is the largest civilization to inhibit the Americas. Master stonemakers, sprawling cities from the Amazon basin to the tops of the Andean mountains, and, in turns out, forebears of brain surgery. Inca’s ancient medicine is seen today in holistic, integrative healing practices, most prominently in the use of principles built upon by the Medicine Wheel.
The Medicine Wheel embodies a rich, complex history that lays the groundwork for ancient healing traditions that continues on to modernity. This article will cover a brief history of the Inca Empire and the Inca’s ancient medicine practices, including the Medicine Wheel
Incas Rise to Power, Fall to Disease, then to the Spanish
Its Quechuan name, Tawantinsuyu (tawa is four, suyu is region), self-describes the four regions from which the Inca Empire rises. The north, east, south and west regions are Chinchaysuyu, Antisuyu, Qullasuyu, and Kuntisuyu, respectively. The name Inca is mostly an incorrect label for the empire given by the Spanish conquistadors, originating from the word meaning the “ruling class” of these four provinces. While the Inca are the approximately 0.1% of the 10 million inhabitants of the empire, ruling the Tawantinsuyu, nonetheless the Spanish brandish them all as Imperio Inca and the name persists to present.
Starting in the 13th century, the prior two empires of the Andean civilization fall, that of the Tiwanaku and Wari. From their decline, the Inca Empire collects much of its culture from these earlier empires and morph from pastoral tribes living independently to a kingdom centered on the city of Cusco, in modern-day Peru.
The first King of Cusco, Manco Cápac, is told to have build the first city with his family and brings the stone-making of his ancestors to the kingdom. The Incas are military conquerors themselves with strategic operations. They are known to collect intelligence, and with the information they offer the other kings and rulers wealth and strength in joining in the kingdom turned empire. Over the centuries, there are sophisticated negotiations for peaceful joiners of the Inca Empire, and there are cases of kings slain so their wives and daughters can marry into the family and return to rule their native lands as part of the empire.
Sadly, all things come to an end, and once the Spanish arrive, they introduce exotic diseases, beginning with smallpox to the Inca people. Ravaged by several smallpox outbreaks, Typhus, influenza, diphtheria and measles, Inca’s ancient medicine is ill-equipped to combat these foreign, unseen invaders. The Spanish ultimately win over the Inca Empire around the end of the 16th century, ending nearly 400 years of this large, iconic American civilization.
How the Inca’s Ancient Medicine and the Medicine Wheel
Archaeologists studying the Inca Empire purport that Inca’s ancient medicine is profoundly sophisticated for its time. As demonstrated in the above video, Inca spiritual healers, or shaman, perform healing ceremonies as is typical of ancient healing traditions, invoking their deities for comfort. And, Inca’s ancient medicine practitioners are also advanced herbalists as well–using quinine for stomach aches and other ailments, coca plant leaves to alleviate pain, and even curare as an anesthetic and sedative.
Incas are known to have invented and be capable of performing ventriculostomies (i.e., small holes drilled into the skull) and decompressive craniectomies (i.e., removing larger parts of the skulls) to relieve cerebral edemas (i.e., brain swelling from a wide variety of maladies) with patients surviving 80-90% of these medical procedures.
This is all in the days before an understanding of microscopic organisms causing infections and antibiotics. The Inca brain surgeons are using copper/bronze implements to break, drill and saw into their patients’ skulls. It’s truly miraculous that archaeologists unearth hundreds of such skulls, providing the operations are not only successful, but some are multi-surgery survivors!
To understand how the Incas excelled at surgery, one needs to look no further than the foundation of their society and science, based on the Medicine Wheel. The Inca people found their empire on the four regions described above and that births (or confirms) their belief systems on observation of four abstracts:
- four directions–north, south, east and west,
- four elements–air (animals), water (plants), fire (humans) and earth (minerals) (respectively), and
- four existences–mind, emotions, spirit, and body (respectively).
This is not a comprehensive view of the many ways in which the Incas see these four directions of the Medicine Wheel, but it demonstrates the idea. The Inca people study the different facets of life through these lenses over the centuries and piece together a fairly remarkable medical repertoire. And, it stands to reason that modern medical researchers can learn from this ancient healing research.
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It is my hope that the Medicine Wheel represents the future of holistic, integrative medicine, hence the name Four Directions Wellness. Humanity can take the best of the allopathic, Western medicine and the ancient teachings of ethnomedicine that works, to build evidence-based treatments that are culturally astute for specific global populations. It is not only a matter of time, but also a necessity, as healthcare costs rise and exotic diseases proliferate. We can defeat these healthcare challenges with our wholebeing medical knowledge in the world. While the Inca’s ancient medicine proves they were not prepared for the threat of exotic diseases, I hope modern medicine is.