Together with the archaeological remains of watering systems and terraced fields for the crops in the Pre-Columbian towns of the Argentinian Northwest, some yards can be found. These squares were possibly a place for exchange,barter, assembling and public meetings where surely, the health problems and their treatment were also discussed. The necessary herbs for different purposes, were they healing or social, could be obtained there. Very probably this public square had been the first expression of hospitalization.
Argentinian north. - Figure found in the Valle de Ambato, used for healing purposes.
In those cultures, the process health-sickness was related to the alimentary stress and diets. The institutionalization of its care was assumed by the community through the bewitcher or “chamanes” who were the custody and transmitters of the magic-religious beliefs of each group, their knowledge and technology. To do so, the bewitchers,as well as the ordinary people, used little statues which stood for spirits linked to different ailments. And they were also skillful in the use of healing and alucinogenous herbs.
Anthropomorphous figures from the argentinian north that were used by the “chamanes” for healing purposes.
The “Kallawayas”, medical bewitchers of the area of the northwest of Argentina, Bolivia and Perú, were able to survive the devastating Spanish conquest, building and sheltering in villages of difficult access in the mountains. They institutionalized a system of medical bewitchers who walk around the region that was previously occupied by their ancestors. The 80 per cent of the natives of the region ask for their care and attention and keep some of their most rooted traditions and cultural characteristics thanks to the continuity of this group of medial bewitchers
