NOTES ON THE MEDICAL PRACTICES OF THE VISAYANS, 1908

The following notes were recorded by a native Visayan teacher:

If a person is ill or feels a pain in any part of his body, he immediately calls in one of the native physicians, who, before going to visit the patient, asks the messenger about his condition, and then goes to his room to consult some wonderful shells or pieces of coral, which he has deposited in a vase, as to whether or not he must visit the patient, as well as to find out if he can cure him or not.

When the physician goes to visit a patient, he usually carries some medicines with him. This medicine, in order to be effective to the patient, must be prepared at sunset under the house, before the lamp is lighted. The doctor may be either a man or a woman, generally advanced in years. When called to attend a poor patient, doctors excuse themselves many times. However, they give the relatives some consolation. They inquire as to the symptoms of the sickness and the state of the patient; they go to consult their oracle, – that is, they put into a plate the miraculous bananan, a white, round, and nearly transparent stone, an inch or more across. To this they pray; and after this ceremony, they claim to know what sickness causes pain to the patient, alleging that the figure of the sick man has appeared in the stone, showing the place of the ailment. At other times, when the physician is very busy or lazy, he limits himself to taking the pulse, not of the patient, but of the one who has come to call him.

Nearly all the sicknesses which the people suffer, according of the doctors, are bad air, lack of appetite, warmth in the stomach or harm from the talonanon, or wild spirits, or from the asuang. If the oracle has advised the physician that the cause of the illness is bad the patient’s relatives to rub the entire body of the patient ten times, less, each day with pounded garlic and alcohol. Sometimes he commands them to soften all the body, and then to rub it with a composition haplas-plant and oils, and then to make the patient drink, in water, powders made from some unknown bark. When the patient feels cold, mustard plasters are applied to the arms and legs, in order “that of the head may spread to the other parts of the body.” If the bad air persists he may even apply the cupping-glass to the back. If the trouble is lack of appetite or warmth in the stomach, a plaster is applied over stomach, and sometimes an infusion of the bark of suma (Anamirta cocculus) is given.

If the patient has money, however, the physician hastens to see him, taking with him his apothecary’s box, made up of mutias (miraculous stones) many barks and roots of trees said to be capable of curing all infirmities. The stones are also used as amulets.

The physician takes the patient’s pulse, and, after a few moments of ponderous meditation, augurs a happy result, and begins to apply his plasters or to administer his infusions or whatever is suitable for the particular disease which he is trying to overcome. He does all this with great care and anxiety, and excessive affectation of his exclusive science.

After this work, those who live in the house offer him wine and meal or the sumsuman (a dish usually made of broiled fish) and the indispensable sanag (his first fee). If this is not forthcoming, the physician insists that the patient will not recover.

If the sick man gets worse, the doctor uses extreme remedies. He cries to God and the Devil, goes to the church to sweep or to offer some service to the saints, and practices superstitious ceremonies in honor of the Divatas. He asks if the patient has been in the shade of any sacred tree, or if he has been in any wood or field, or on the shore of some river. If he answers affirmatively, as of course usually happens, the doctor respires strongly, as if he had found the efficacious remedy. “I tell you,” he asserts, “that this sickness has singular symptoms and character. It is clear from the magic stone, or wedge of wood, that malignant spirits have caused it by introducing themselves into his body, to avenge themselves for some offence which, perhaps without knowing it, he has caused them. It is necessary to drive them out with incantations or with a plaster made of pounded ginger root.” If this remedy does not give the desired effect, the doctor puts several fire-pans around the patient’s bed, and burns in them some incense, blessed palm, or rosemary; and if he escapes killing him with asphyxia, he gets a blessed palm, and with this he tries to drive away from the body of the patient the malignant spirits, whipping the patient with all his might, and believing that he does not feel the pain, but that the spirits do. He also shakes the walls of the house, in order to send the demons to the fifth hell.

This is the sort of treatment given when the physician tries to give back hurt for hurt to his invisible enemies. At other times he prefers to pacify their anger with the following ceremonies: He hangs a hen’s egg around the patient’s neck, or kills a pig and divides it into two parts, – one for himself, and the other for the patient. He takes the former and performs incantations over it; but the latter he seasons, and causes it to be boiled. Then he divides it into several parts, putting each into a plate. These are then carried to the places where the patient has been, in order that the offended spirits may eat the meat. In point of fact, the contents of the plates always disappear. This practice is a reminiscence of the ancient belief. If, in spite of all the doctors can do, the patient succumbs to his illness, it is attributed to the influence of an asuang or witch, and an attempt is made to find her and put her to death. Of course, no discredit is attached to the physician. The patient died because it was foreordained thus.

Other practices and medicines are as follows:

• When a person is sick, all windows and doors are tightly shut, and the patient wrapped up from head to foot. Night air is very bad for any one, sick or well.
• A sick person must not bathe nor have his hair cut; but after he is better, a bath in the sea is very essential to complete recovery.
• Sea-bathing is very injurious during the first quarter of the moon.
• Small children must wash their faces only when they take their weekly bath, and on no account must they wash on cool mornings.
• A cold is cured by making a cross with lime on the patient’s throat. Rock candy is good for a cough.
• Honey is used both as a preventive of and a cure for smallpox.
• Powdered monkey’s bones in water are good for malaria, which disease will also yield to a course of graveyard mould, in water. If this fails, the gall of the iguana may be tried.
• Much of the sickness is attributed to wind in the body; and for this plasters made of tar, and placed on the temples, are good. Chicken is very bad to eat, as it creates gas in the stomach.
• A tea made from cockroaches (here as large as the first two joints of a man’s index-finger) is good for sick babies, kind of illness not specified.
• The first rain that falls at the beginning of the rainy season is used as medicine. As it comes from a nipa roof which has been collecting dust and germs for three months or more, it ought to be able to do something.
• Goats’ toe-nails, scraped, and taken in water, is good for boils.
• The juice of tamarind-leaves, in water, is taken internally for bruises.

In addition to these remedies, various leaves and herbs are used, with what genuine results it is difficult to say.

• The juice of a certain kind of leaf is rubbed all over the body as a cure for the dengue or break-bone fever.
• The bark of some trees and the leaves of others, among them the almond, may be useful in the treatment of malaria, as may also a tea of bamboo roots; but one is a little in doubt as to the use of leaves for a badly sprained arm, or the buyo-leaf (which is also used to chew with the betel-nut) for a headache. In case of headaches, small plasters about the size of a quarter of a dollar, made of a certain gray bean, are placed, one on each temple. A bath in the sea at the end of two days completes the cure. These plasters raise a blister.
• Edible swallows’ nests are eagerly sought after to give to children about a month old.

Source:
Notes on the Medical Practices of the Visayans
The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 21, No. 81 (Apr. – Sep., 1908), pp. 246-248
Published by: American Folklore Society