"So they wouldn't lose their needles in a body. The other, or common needles, they just stuck into the body wherever the wound or sore place was and left them there."
"And what, may I ask, was the idea of this playful Korean surgery! Was it something like our 'button, button, whose got the button?'"
"No, the idea was that there were devils in the wound. If it was a swelling there was a devil in that swelling. If it was typhoid fever, and there was pain in the bowels, there was a devil in the inward parts affected, and so, after carefully sterilizing the needle by running it through his long, black, greasy hair, the native doctor would run it into the affected part of the body to kill the devil or let it escape from the body."
"The old idea of a fear religion, a fear social life, a fear family life and a fear surgery prevails in Korea as it does in China?" I said by way of a question.
"It prevails everywhere in the Orient. To me it is the most awful thing about working out here. The awful sense of constant fear that is on the people always and everywhere."
Pounded-up claws of a tiger; the red horn of a deer; pulverized fish bones; roots of trees, pigs' eyes; and a thousand poisons and fear-remedies make up the medical history of the Oriental doctor.
"Why do they kill girl babies?"
"Fear!"
"Fear of what?"
"Fear of devils! The devils will be displeased if a girl baby is born. Therefore kill the baby.