Books with title Mad Medicine

Medicine has been practiced for thousands of years, from the use of plants as medicine, to simple procedures as splinting broken bones. But over the last 200 years we have made huge progress. We now use tools and techniques our ancestors could never have imagined. In this book, find out: If stem cells could help cure many different diseases? If microscopic robots will one day carry out surgery inside blood vessels? If crocodile blood and fish slime could produce important new drugs?

Kee Chee Begay is in conflict about his identity. His grandfather, Man Who Sings, is an important medicine man for the Navajo people who expects fourteen-year-old Kee Chee to take lessons from him and follow in his footsteps. Kee Chee is reluctant to tell his grandfather that he neither shares the same dream nor feels the spirit within himself during the ceremonies. When Kee Chee's old, working sheepdog, Tojo, is run down by a hit and run driver, Man Who Sings orders Kee Chee to put the dog down; a Navajo sheepdog which cannot work is worthless. Kee Chee defies his grandfather's order, and takes the animal to a white doctor. This adds another layer of personal strain to the grandson-grandfather relationship. To pay for the dog's operation and care, Kee Chee translates for young Dr. Hart. He becomes the bridge between the good doctor and his Navajo patients not only by translating the language, but by explaining the doctor's behavior and the Navajo traditions to both sides. In the process, Kee Chee learns to respect the white doctor and his medicine. Kee Chee's relationship with Man Who Sings grows and changes as he gains perspective about life from his cousin, Gray Horse, and Dr. Hart. Gray Horse has chosen a path different from that prescribed by his family; he is going to become a teacher, and has already won a scholarship to Northern Arizona University. Ultimately Kee Chee speaks to his grandfather and tells him that he wants to go to college to become a trained translator for his people. Grandfather allows that he must have misinterpreted his own dream of his grandchild taking his place. Obviously, the grandchild of the dream was Yazzie, Kee Chee's young sister, who delights in the ceremonial activities and chants. There is humor too in the interchanges between Man Who sings and Dr. Hart as the two work toward a common ground. It was an herbal drink that finally helped Hart to shake his sinus headache after all of his modern pills didn't work. The tragedy of Kee Chee's father's death brings a deeper understanding of the man along with the guilt and sadness Kee Chee feels for their relationship gone cold. His father threw away traditional Navajo values in favor of gambling. Kee Chee has learned from his father's mistakes. Medicine Man is a novel about relationships and a teenage boy's dealing with growing up.