"The precise definition of and the specific uses ascribed to the natural products which Siberian peoples use for medicinal purposes illustrate the care and ingeniousness, the attention to detail and concern with distinctions employed by theoretical and practical workers in societies of this kind. We find, for instance: spiders and whiteworms swallowed as a cure for sterility among the Helmene and Iakoute; fat of black beetle (Ossete, hydrophobia); squashed cockroach, chicken's gall (Russians of Sourgout, abscesses and hernias); macerated redworms (Iakoute, rheumatism); pike's gall (Bouriate, eye complaints); loach and crayfish swallowed alive (Russians of Siberia, epilepsy and all diseases); contact with a woodpecker's beak, blood of a woodpecker, nasal insufflation of the powder of a mummified woodpecker, gobbled egg of the bird koukcha (Iakoute, against toothache, scrofula, high fevers and tuberculosis respectively); partridge's blood, horse's sweat (Oirote, hernias and warts); pigeon broth (Bouriate, coughs); powder made of the crushed feet of the bird tilegous (Kazak, bite of mad dog); dried bat worn round the neck (Russians of the Altai, fever); instillation of water from an icicle hanging on the nest of the bird remiz (oirote, eye complaints). Taking just the case of bears among the Bouriate: the flesh of bears has seven distinct therapeutic uses, the blood five, the fat nine, the brains twelve, the bile seventeen, the fur two." (Claude Levi-Strauss, "The Savage Mind," 1962, p. 8-9).
And yet, there's no cure for insomnia in that list. I kind of thought that reading it at 6:30am should have done the trick, but apparently not.
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