«Knowing the sick until savoring them». This phrase, added to an endless number of remedies with natural resources, is the basis of ancestral medicine investigated by the doctor from Albacete Juan Miguel Armero, who has just returned from Brazil. He inquires into the little free time that his job as backup doctor at Sescam leaves him, which he practices between Bogarra and Balazote.
Dr Armero travels to Brazil in search of a scientific basis for his ancestral remedies
Dr Armero has been part of the Albacete Balompié medical team. Specialist in Family and Community Medicine, he studied at the Miguel Hernández University of Elche and did his residency at the General University Hospital of Albacete. As a backup doctor for Sescam, he has passed through an endless number of towns, but at the moment he works between Bogarra and Balazote.
And it is that he likes rural medicine, the one that grants more closeness with the patient. It is precisely this contact with the Albacete mountains that has led him to become interested in ancestral medicine. Just as in this province the properties of thyme or milk thistle are known, in countries like Brazil, in remote towns like the one you just visited, ancestral remedies that have been passed down thanks to oral tradition from parents to children are still preserved.
The objective of Dr. Armero is to rescue this knowledge to look for both the scientific basis and the formula in natural remedies so that they are not lost in a change of generation. To do this, this doctor enrolled at the University of Rosario, in Argentina, which has a diploma based on traditional medicine or Ayurveda.
Harness the knowledge of the past with the resources of the present
These studies have put him in contact with a well-known Argentine cardiologist, Lucía de Vicenti, who has been the one who has accompanied him on a true adventure, since reaching the town in Brazil was not easy. The accesses were complicated and the natives were jealous guardians of their privacy. However, finally, the doctor from Albacete, with the help of the Argentine cardiologist, ended up listening to the recipes of the local ‘healer’.
The objective is none other than to listen, take notes and samples, in order to verify if the ancestral medicine that is practiced in the town where the doctor from Albacete arrived has a scientific basis that can be applied today.
But it’s not just about botany. The medicine that Dr. Armero has seen in the town of Brazil, like the ayurveda of India, emphasizes prevention, paying attention to what the patient eats, how many hours he sleeps or if he exercises, it also focuses on how he digests what that eats. And above all, he listens.
