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Native American medicine

American Native and Alaska Native medicine are traditional forms of healing that have been around for thousands of years. There are many ethnobotany plants involved in traditional medicine for Native Americans and some are still used today. When it comes to Native American traditional medicine, the ideas surrounding health and illness within the culture are virtually inseparable from the ideas of religion and spirituality. Healers within indigenous communities go by many names ranging from medicine man or woman to herbalist or even shaman and are considered spiritual or religious leaders within their respective tribes. When it comes to healing, tribal healers would look at a plant's characteristics to determine its efficacy for the treatment of an illness. Specific plant characteristics such as plant shape, smell, color, and taste could aid in determining how the plant could be used as a remedy. The Meskwaki tribe found they could use the juice from Arum maculatum for snakebites. This was inferred from the milky appearance of the juice from the plant which is said to resemble snake venom, and the plant's shape resembled the head of a snake. Native Americans used foxglove herb as a treatment for an illness they referred to as dropsy or edema, which is fluid buildup typically in the lower legs, and its common cause is heart failure. In modern medicine, foxglove extract is still used under the name digitalis, and its purpose is to moderate the heart rate. Native Americans were successful with some medical practices, such as treating fevers, gastrointestinal conditions, skin rashes, setting bones, as well as birthing babies, and aiding mothers in healing. A study conducted within an IHS hospital that allows Navajo healers to visit patients found that the hospital had an 80 percent success rate in getting comatose patients back to consciousness, which is higher than the rate of present-day biomedical management hospitals. The plant family Asteraceae has been commonly selected for orthopedic aids and pulmonary aids, specifically the species Achillea and Artemisia. A study conducted amongst 14 different tribes within North America found that Asteraceae was the most widely used plant family for its medicinal properties.