Elephant Medicine

What eats half a tonne of vegetation a day and builds dams to ensure a permanent water supply? A giant beaver? No, an elephant! This highly intelligent animal seems to possess the ability to reason and solve problems, such as building dams to collect water in areas where it is scarce.

The elephant also practices what humans would call folk medicine; they use natural substances to ease pain or cure illnesses. One bull had an abscess at the base of his tusk. The wound was apparently so sensitive that the slightest contact between the tusk and a tree produced a sharp pain that must have shot through his head. This elephant, once a great defender of his herd, now walked backwards through the rush to protect his sensitive face. He also kept well away from the herd to prevent other elephants from bumping into him. The bull’s only relief from pain came when he could find a mud hole where he could use the elephant’s common practice of treating wounds with soothing mud packs. The bull would simply lie down so that the aching side of his face was submerged in the cool mud.

In another herd, many of the elephants were growing thin. They did not lack food but were afflicted with parasites. A healthy female seemed to realize the problem. She led the herd to the foot of a mountain where the elephants hacked out pieces of limestone and feed kilograms of the mineral mixed with gravel to one another. After a 24-hour rest, the infested animals were cured, and the healthy ones had protected themselves against infestation.

There are many promises in the Bible that assure us that God will watch over us and satisfy our physical needs as well as our spiritual needs. In Exodus 15:26 God promise Israel that if they followed his health principles He gave them, that they would not suffer the diseases of the Egyptians. The health principles in the Bible, were millenniums ahead of modern Science, and even though Science has proven their validity, even many Christians reject them as ‘Old Testament’, and therefore not credible. For instance, Europe would not have experienced the black death (plague) to the devastating effect it did, had they followed what the Bible, in the Old Testament, said about infectious disease. Science has validated what God told Israel about diet and hygiene. They were encapsulated in the health ‘laws.’

Netflix has a great series at the moment called Secrets of the Blue Zones where people enjoy longer life than the normal population.

Also, I have written an article on God’s distinction of clean and unclean that is too long to include here – if you are interested here is the link to my Dropbox where you can access the article.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1a4fmmea5a9wmnr9zj46c/The-Truth-of-Clean-and-Unclean.docx?rlkey=o0o30hrla8nqv7zsa7301xcz0&dl=0