The Last of the Medicine Men
Traditional healers around the world.
An investigation into the dramatic and mysterious world of traditional priests, shamans and 'witchdoctors' around the globe, focusing on the harmonious, herb-gathering Mentawai of Siberut, the shamans now bizarrely emerging in urban Tuva, the Vodou practises of Haiti, and the Huichol of Mexico - where one of the most traditional communities of Central America gave Benedict the rare privilege of joining their pilgrimage to the ancestral land of Wirikuta, where he took peyote, the 'mind-enhancing' cactus, to bring him at last "face-to-face" with the gods.
BA's comment: "I persuaded the BBC to undertake what turned out to be the biggest ever such TV series -and argued for a book that wouldn't resemble a TV-tie of any sort. This is the result – a stand alone account of what I witnessed while spending time with remote and "exotic" healers around the world. Here was an end of an era - not just for 'medicine men' but for an era of broadcasting. For better or worse, it was anthropology rather than contrived entertainment."
2000
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