Introduction:
It is still being determined how conventional medical practice fits into Australia's contemporary biomedical healthcare paradigm in Australia in 2013 and to what degree it still prevails within the primary healthcare system. The kind of sickness presented, the effectiveness of biomedical therapy, the availability of traditional healers, and beliefs on disease etiology were factors in this difference. Conventional medical methods were employed in addition to, simultaneously with, and following biological therapy. The primary health care outcomes for Aboriginal Australians may benefit from a better understanding of the function of traditional medicine practice and efforts to enhance and promote integrative and governance models for traditional medicine practice.
How Is Traditional Medicine Practice (TMP) In Australia?
- Australia has at least 65,000 years of human habitation. The land gave the first Australians all they required for a good existence for all those years.
- The women were responsible for gathering the plants, which comprised at least half of the nourishment consumed by the earliest Australians. Roots could typically be dug up all year long since the soil serves as a natural pantry, but fruits, seeds, and greens were seasonal.
- Traditional medicine practice (TMP) in Australia comprises a holistic worldview that mirrors this description.
- According to this worldview, health is a complex system that involves kinship with the land, acknowledging one's heritage and spirit, and the social, mental, physical, and emotional welfare of the person and the community.
- Indigenous Australians believe illness can have three origins: a physical, natural cause, a ghost doing damage, or a sorcery-related illness.
- It has profoundly influenced traditional practices, including traditional medicine, due to colonization and the consequent uprooting and alienation of people from their native lands and, subsequently, from their traditional families.
What Is Australian Traditional Medicine?
People in Australia who utilize traditional remedies are known as bush people. Indigenous Australians have used various natural Australian plant and animal parts as medicine for hundreds of years. Many still seek local healers for drugs that promote physical and spiritual recovery. Traditional healing practices have historically supported non-Indigenous medications. One famous example is the invention of seasickness remedies, which enabled the Allies to invade Normandy during World War II.
Indigenous people who are ill are now treated in certain healthcare networks using traditional healers and medicines in contemporary clinical settings. Australia is a multicultural country with a population of immigrants and indigenous people who follow various cultural, linguistic, ethnic, and religious traditions. This prompts the issue of how to simultaneously safeguard a varied population's access to their traditional treatments and safeguard them from the risks associated with uncontrolled goods and claims.
What Plants Do Australians Utilize for Medicine?
Various plants were utilized as food or medication in various regions of Australia.
- In Australia, bush medicine is mostly produced from plant parts like bark, leaves, and seeds. However, it has also occasionally included animal ingredients. Herbal therapy, or natural plant products to cure or prevent sickness, is a significant aspect of traditional medicine.
- Numerous tropical trees, such as local figs (Ficus spp.), lilly-pillies (Acmena, Eugenia, and Syzygium spp.), and macadamia nuts, yield fruits and seeds in Arnhem Land, North Queensland, and the Kimberley.
- Plants are sparsely distributed over Central Australia due to the need for more water. Here, local grasses and wattles like mulga (Acacia aneura), wiry wattle (Acacia coriacea), and even the coolabah tree were more commonly used as food sources (Eucalyptus microtheca).
- The most significant foods in Australia's southern regions were those with roots.
- Traditional medicine includes a lot of herbal remedies. Aboriginal people respect the therapeutic properties of E. alternifolia, which some Australians see as an invasive weed; some even take the leaves around with them. They utilize it to alleviate cold and flu symptoms, with some seeing it as a cure.
- The leaves of the emu bush, which certain Australian people of the Northern Territory used to sterilize wounds and cuts, are another plant utilized in bush medicine. If required, it might also be gargled. Additionally, the stinging nettle has been utilized in traditional Aboriginal bush medicine to treat rheumatism and paralysis.
- Australian people employed a variety of plants at Mitchell Park, which is now a part of Cattai National Park and is close to Sydney Basin, as cures. The park's nine eucalyptus species might be used as treatments. It is well known that the red gum kino contains several astringent tannins.
- This park furthermore had indigenous flora that early European immigrants utilized. Banksia flower nectar was utilized as cough medicine, and local grapes (Cissus hypoglauca) were used to make throat gargles.
- Numerous components of plants were employed to make remedies. Local mint species (Mentha species) were used to cure colds and coughs, while tannin-rich gum from gum trees was used to treat burns. The green plum, or Bucanania obovata, has a staggering amount of vitamin C.
- The kangaroo apple is an excellent example of a food source and medicinal plant. It is also known as the bush apple, and it is grown in many regions of the world to make oral contraceptives using extracts from the young leaves and green fruits.
- There are about a thousand wattle species in Australia. Some species' gum—such as that of golden, silver, and black wattles—was a valuable food source and an effective cement. Other species' seeds are abundant in protein and carbohydrates and were consumed both green and dry in desert regions.
- Wattle flowers were hung in the huts of the occupants to promote sleep. In Victoria, the bark of blackwood (Acacia melanoxylon) was consumed as a moderate sedative for rheumatism or indigestion or steeped and used to wash rheumatic joints.
- The plant known as old man's weed (Centipeda cunninghamii), which grows along the Murray River and in other low-lying, marshy areas, has several medicinal uses, including treating eye infections, tuberculosis, and skin conditions. It is given as an extract diluted in water or occasionally applied topically.
- It is typically used to treat chest infections, colds, and coughs, but because it is a natural therapeutic herb, it can also help boost immunity and mobility.
- Australia is home to this plant. The juice from the root was used to treat wounds and toothaches in Queensland. The liquid from the chewed leaf was applied to stings from stonefish and stingrays and wrapped up for four to five days.
Conclusion:
Australia might gain from looking to other countries for better governance of traditional medicine and improve this assistance. The primary health care results for Australians may be improved by better understanding the function of TMP through increased quality and quantity of research within Australia. According to the Therapeutic Goods Act of 1989, medical items in Australia, known as complementary medicines, including herbs, vitamins, minerals, nutritional supplements, homeopathic remedies, and certain aromatherapy treatments, are regulated as medicines.
