Healthcare Systems Flashcards
A medical practice that aims to combat disease through “conventional” means like drugs or surgery.
Allopathy
A 6,000-year-old system of healing originating in India and Nepal.
Ayurveda
A system that uses highly diluted solutions of herbs, minerals, and animal products to promote wellness.
Homeopathy
A holistic medical system that treats health conditions by utilizing what is believed to be the body’s innate ability to heal. Physicians aid healing processes by incorporating a variety of natural methods based on the patient’s individual needs.
Naturopathy
A healthcare system that tends to incorporate various methods of botanical and animal medicines as well as specific ceremonial rituals of the culture to cure disease. The medicinal knowledge is passed from generation to generation primarily through oral traditions. The system tends to be unique to each tribe.
Indigenous or Tribal Medicine
An ancient system of holistic medicine developed in China.
Chinese Medicine
The use of fragrant plants or plant extracts based on the assumption that specific aromas affect the body in different ways.These aromas (essential oils in most cases) are inhaled or applied to the skin in a carrier oil base, such as olive oil or
sweet almond oil.
Aromatherapy
Specially prepared liquid flower extract used to improve psychological wellbeing through energetic and vibrational resonance.
Flower essence
A bitter secretion of the liver that aids digestion, chiefly by saponifying fats.
Bile
The concept that the appearance and/or habitat of a plant indicates its inherent proper ties.
Doctrine of Signatures
An ayurvedic term to describe three energies (vata, pitta, kapha) that circulate in the body and contribute to physical and emotional constitutional tendencies and disease.
Dosha
System of herbalism developed in the United States in the 19th century CE. The Eclectic physicians pulled together herbs and philosophies from various healing
traditions.
Eclectic
An extremely light and volatile concentrated oil extracted from aromatic plants; used in aromatherapy and produced by distillation or chemical extraction.
Essential oil
Black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood; historically thought to be fluids contained within the body in this specific theory of Western herbalism.
Four Humors
In Chinese medicine, the life force that governs all creativity and reproduction.
Jing