In the forbidden land

by Arnold Henry Savage Landor

CHAPTER XLVIII

Illnesses and remedies—Curious theories about fever—Evil spirits—Blacksmith and dentist—Exorcisms—Surgical operations—Massage and cupping—Incurable illnesses—Deformities—Deafness—Fits and insanity—Melancholia—Suicides.

The Lamas became quite communicative, enabling me, partly with the little Hindustani that I knew and partly with the Tibetan I had picked up, to enter into a conversation about illnesses and their remedies, certain as I was that they must have strange notions on the subject. I was not disappointed in this surmise, and from that conversation and my own observation on previous and subsequent occasions, I am able to give a few details of the methods of the Lamas in curing the more frequent ailments found in the country.

The Lamas explained to me that all diseases arose from fever, instead of fever being an accompaniment of most illnesses, and furthermore, that fever itself was but an evil spirit, which assumed different forms when it entered the body, and caused all sorts of complaints. The fever demon, they asserted, was a spirit, but there were yet other demons who were so good as to bring us riches and happiness. For instance, when a man after a dangerous illness visited a a cave, waterfall or river-gorge which these demons were supposed to haunt, he might have a relapse and die, or he might be instantly cured and live happy ever afterwards. In the latter case, as would naturally be expected, the recipient of such inestimable privileges generally returned to pay a second visit to the kindly spirits who made his life worth living, "but," said the Lamas quite seriously, "when he goes a second time he will get blind or paralytic, as a punishment for his greediness."

"The evil spirits," continued a fat old Lama with crooked fingers, which he clenched and shook as he spoke, "are in the shape of human beings or like goats, dogs, sheep or ponies, and sometimes they assume the semblance of wild animals, such as bears and snow leopards."

I told the Lamas that I had remarked many cases of goître and also other abnormalities, such as hare-lip and webbed fingers and toes, as well as the very frequent occurrence of supernumerary fingers or toes. I asked them the reason for such cases, and they attributed them, with the exception of webbed fingers, to the mischievous work of demons before the child's birth; they could not, however, suggest a remedy for goître.

Inguinal and umbilical hernia are quite common, as I have on several occasions observed, and coarse belts are made according to the taste and ingenuity of the sufferer, but are of hardly any efficacy in preventing the increase of the swellings.

A common complaint, especially among the older women, was rheumatism, from which they seemed to suffer considerably. It affected their fingers and toes, and particularly the wrists and ankles, the joints swelling so as to render them quite stiff, the tendons contracting, swelling, and becoming prominent and hard in the palms of the hands.

Both before and after my conversation with the Lamas I had opportunities of ascertaining that the stomachs of the Tibetans are seldom in good working order. But how could they be when you consider the gallons of filthy tea which they drink daily, and the liquor to which they are so partial? This poisonous concoction is enough to destroy the gastric juices of an ostrich! The tongue, as I have mentioned already, is invariably thickly furred with a whitish coating, and Tibetans have often complained to me of tumours as well as of painful burnings in the stomach, the latter undoubtedly caused by ulcerations. It is to be regretted that, even in the high land of Tibet, the worst of all sexual diseases (called by the Tibetans Boru) has made vast numbers of victims, palpable traces of it showing themselves in eruptions, particularly on the forehead and on the ears, round the mouth and under the nostrils, on the arms and legs. In cases of very long standing, a peculiar whitish discoloration of the skin and gums was to be noticed, with abnormal contraction of the pupils. That such a disease is well rooted in the country we have proof enough in the foul teeth which the majority of Tibetans possess. In nearly all cases that I examined, the teeth were, even in young men, so loose, decayed and broken as to make me feel quite sorry for their owners, and during the whole time I was in Tibet—and I came in contact with several thousand people—I believe that I could almost count on my fingers the sets of teeth that appeared quite regular, healthy and strong. As a rule, too, the women had better teeth than the men. No doubt the admixture of bad blood in the Tibetan race contributes a great deal to the unevenness and malformation of their teeth, and if we add to this the fact that the corruption of the blood, even apart from disease, is very great owing to their peculiar laws of marriage, it is not surprising that the services of dentists are everywhere required. The teeth of Tibetans are generally of such a brittle nature that the dentist of Tibet—usually a Lama and a blacksmith as well—has devised an ingenious way of protecting them from further destruction by means of a silver cap encasing the broken tooth. I once saw a man with all his front teeth covered in this fashion, and as the dentist who had attended to him had constructed the small cases apparently with no regard to shape or comfort, but had made most of them end in a point for mastication's sake, the poor man had a ghastly appearance every time that he opened his mouth. The Tibetans are not very sensitive to physical pain, as I have had reason to judge on several occasions, when I have seen teeth extracted in the most primitive fashion, without a sound being emitted from the sufferer.