By Kathirasen
YOU have Hepatitis A, the doctor announced, quite cheerily.
I gaped at him with jaundiced eyes. Literally. The stranger’s face in my mirror and the tell-tale yellow eyes had already warned me.
But hepatitis? There’s something about the names of illnesses with an A, B or C attached that disturbs me. This was one A that I neither wanted nor needed.
Seeing my pitiful attempt at raising my eyebrows, the good doctor assured me that it was nothing to worry about. Nothing, he declared, that a good rest couldn’t cure.
He could give me some medicine, he said. “But,” he added in a conspiratorial tone, “you will recover faster if you opt for traditional Indian medicine.”
Being one who sees a doctor mainly for a diagnosis and a prognosis – and takes drugs only if the situation is bad – I heartily agreed.
The doctor recommended a herb, called keelanelli in Tamil. I was to grind it, roll it into a ball and swallow it with goat’s milk. Twice a day.
He called in the clinic helper, an older woman, and told her to show me a keelanelli (Phyllanthus amarus) plant.
Escorting me outside the clinic in Sungai Petani, she pointed out the thin and short plant. She told me I could find it anywhere – in the garden or by the roadside.
True enough, I found the plants growing abundantly by the road in front of my house and in my garden. I had always thought of them as weeds. Now they were medicine.
The word keelanelli means the “nellikai that is underneath”, for the plant has tiny “fruits” that resemble the nellikai or amla (Indian gooseberry or Emblica officinalis) under the leaves.
A week on keelanelli and goat’s milk restored my health. That was some 20 years ago.
I was reminded of this after reading a New Straits Times’ article on Oct 24 quoting Natural Resources and Environment Minister Datuk Seri Azmi Khalid as saying that traditional medicine had helped him on three occasions, including saving him from blindness.
Azmi said this after reading an Oct 22 article in the NST on psychic healers – people who could heal using chakra therapy, verses from holy books or by a touch of their hands.
One of the practitioners, Parvathy Amma, from Kajang, claimed that the incorporeal figures of famous dead doctors performed the surgery on her patients and that she merely acted as the channel. She swore she could see these ghostly beings.
Since my colleague Annie Freeda Cruez wrote that article, she has been inundated with more than 500 phone calls and some hundred emails. To say she is astounded would be an understatement.
The callers, of different racial and religious backgrounds, wanted more details and contact numbers.
When we are ill and need a cure, neither the race nor religion of the doctor or healer matters.
But when we are agitated over some perceived wrong, we don’t hesitate to run down an entire race or religion, forgetting that many of its members – such as doctors, shopkeepers and rubbish collectors – have helped us directly or indirectly.
Isn’t this hypocrisy?
I remember my father taking me to a Chinese medium when I was a child. The medium went into a trance and whipped himself.
I remember the man writing something in Chinese characters on a piece of yellow paper. I remember him lighting it and holding it over a cup of water as it burned, allowing the ashes to fall into it.
I remember being told to drink the water.
I recall my father carrying me on his bicycle to a mosque where an elderly man held a glass of water in his hands and recited some Quranic verses in the direction of the water.
I recall drinking the water.
Yes, my father was one of those people who believed that all religions lead to God.
Although a Hindu, he did not see anything amiss in visiting the houses of worship of other religions, or seeking treatment at these holy places.
Yes, my father also took me to the hospital when he thought it was necessary.
At one time, traditional medicine was the favoured method but as English education spread, allopathic medicine became king.
Many frowned on those who sought traditional treatment.
Today, as more and more Westerners turn to Eastern and traditional medicine – such as siddha medicine, ayurvedic treatment and acupuncture – after discovering that allopathic medicine is not the cure-all they once supposed it to be, Malaysians are also doing likewise.
Why is it that we so frequently take the cue from the West?
Even when it comes to our own heritage?
But, like allopathic medicine, there is no guarantee that traditional medicine will work for everyone or work all the time.
I am one of those averse to taking medicine. I have a particular distaste for those large pills that refuse to enter my oesophagus quietly, and do a dance in my throat as they deliberate whether to come out or go in.
But I don’t fear drugs.
I just do not want any side effects. For, almost every drug has some sort of side effect.
And doctors, I find, often like to experiment with drugs. I once had some tiny black spots in the neck area and went to see a doctor.
That’s when I discovered doctors could perform miracles. His ointment turned the black dots white.
Another doctor gave me some tablets, a different ointment and a bar of soap. The dots began to happily multiply, as though they were high on fertility pills.
Declaring that I had been given wrong medication, another doctor prescribed a different ointment and more tablets.
To cut the story short, four doctors later, I saw a skin specialist who refrained from touching my skin.
Perhaps that’s why his medicine did not work.
Another three doctors later, I saw another specialist. His medicine worked.
My friend Visvamitran feels that the Hippocratic Oath no longer applies at private hospitals.
“They are just hungry for money. They ask you to take all sorts of tests and scans, some of which are unnecessary.
“To them, doctoring is not about healing,” he charges, “it’s about profits.”
This may be so. But one should not forget the tremendous good that allopathic medicine has done, especially in the realm of public health.
Millions are alive today thanks to allopathic medicine.
The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.
– Voltaire
(c) 2006 New Straits Times. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.
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