In the Forbidden Land/Chapter XLIX


 * A Tibetan medicine-man&mdash;Lumbago, and a startling cure for it&mdash;Combustible fuses&mdash;Fire and butter&mdash;Prayers, agony, and distortions&mdash;Strange ideas on medicine.

STRANGE as the Tibetan remedies seemed to be, none came up, as far as interest went, to one I saw applied at a place called Kutzia. I had entered a camp of some twenty or thirty tents, when my attention was drawn to an excited crowd collected round an old man whose garments had been removed. He was tightly bound with ropes, and agony was depicted on his features. A tall, long-haired man with red coat and heavy boots knelt by the side of the sufferer and prayed fervently, twirling round a prayer-wheel which he held in his right hand.

My curiosity aroused, I approached the gathering, whereupon three or four Tibetans got up and signed to me to be off. I pretended not to understand, and, after a heated discussion, I was allowed to remain.

An operation was obviously being performed by a Tibetan medicine-man, and the suspense in the crowd round the sick man was considerable. The doctor was busy preparing combustible fuses, which he wrapped up carefully in silk paper. When cut in the centre they formed two cones, each with a little tail of twisted paper protruding beyond its summit. Having completed six or eight of these, the medicine-man made his patient, or rather his victim, assume a sitting posture. I inquired what ailed the sick man. From what they told me, and from an examination made on my own account, I was satisfied that the man was suffering from an attack of lumbago. The coming cure, however, interested me more than the illness itself, and the doctor, seeing how absorbed I was in the performance, asked me to sit by his side. First of all the man called for "fire," and a woman handed him a blazing brand from a fire near by. He swung it to and fro in the air, and pronounced certain exorcisms. Next the patient was subjected to a thorough examination, giving vent to a piercing yell each time that the long bony fingers of the physician touched his sides, whereupon the man of science, pointing to the spot, informed his open-mouthed audience that the pain was "there." Putting on a huge pair of spectacles, he rubbed with the palm of his hand the umbilical region of the sufferer and then measured with folded thumb two inches on each side of, and slightly under, the umbilicus. To mark these distances he used the burning brand, applying it to the flesh at these points.

"Murr, murr!" ("Butter, butter!") he next called for, and butter was produced. Having rubbed a little on the burns, he placed upon each of them a separate cone, and pressed until it remained a fixture, the point upwards. Shifting the beads of a rosary, revolving the praying-wheel, and muttering prayers, the medicine-man now worked himself into a perfect frenzy. He stared at the sun, raising his voice from a faint whisper to a thundering baritone at its loudest, and his whole audience seemed so affected by the performance that they all shook and trembled and prayed in their terror. He now again nervously clutched the burning wood in one hand, and, blowing upon it with the full strength of his lungs, produced a flame. The excitement in the crowd became intense. Every one, head down to the ground, prayed fervently. The doctor waved the ignited wood three or four times in the air and then applied the flames to the paper tips of the combustible cones. Apparently saltpetre and sulphur had been mixed in the preparation of these. They burned fast, making a noise like the fuse of a rocket.

At this juncture the animation of the onlookers was not to be compared with the agitation of the patient, who began to feel the effects of this primitive remedy. The fire spluttered on his bare skin. The cure was doing its work. The wretched man's mouth foamed, and his eyes bulged out of their sockets. He moaned and groaned, making desperate efforts to unloose the bonds that kept his hands fast behind his back. Two stalwart men sprang forward and held him, while the medicine-man and all the women present, leaning over the prostrate form, blew with all their might upon what remained of the three smoking cones frizzling away into the flesh of the wretched victim.

The pain of which the man complained seemed to encircle his waist, wherefore the strange physician, having untied his patient's arms from behind, and retied them in front, began his measurements again, this time from the spinal column.

"Chik, ni, sum!" ("One, two, three!") he exclaimed, as he marked the three spots in the same fashion as before, smeared them over with butter, and affixed the cones. Here ensued a repetition of the previous excitement; prayers, agony, and distortions, but the patient was not thoroughly cured, and more cones were subsequently ignited on both his sides, in spite of his protests and my appeals on his behalf. The poor fellow soon had a regular circle of severe burns round his body.

Needless to say, when, two hours later, the operation was over, the sick man had become a dying man. With a view to obtaining a few hints on Tibetan medicine from this eminent physician&mdash;the Tibetans held him in great esteem&mdash;I sent him a small present and requested him to visit me. He was flattered and showed no desire to keep his methods a secret, but even pressed me to try some of his unique remedies.

According to him, fire would cure most illnesses; what fire could not cure, water would. He had, nevertheless, some small packets of variously coloured powders, for which he claimed extraordinary powers.

"I am afraid your patient will die," I remarked.

"He may," was the reply, "but it will be the fault of the patient, not the cure. Besides, what does it matter whether you die to-day or to-morrow?"

And with this unprofessional dictum he left me.