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dbratt@trinidad.net
Weird things people believe
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My reputation as the infertility doctor was made.
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Other fertility treatments read like a witch’s spell
book.
She
must have been 19 or 20 years old and she was frantic with
worry. Her monthly was one week late.
I was a final-year medical student doing my weekly obligatory
24-hour on-call stint at the district hospital in Los Teques,
a small town up in the hills outside Caracas but much desired
by medical students at the Central University of Venezuela,
because of its proximity to the Pan American highway and
the opportunity to gain experience in major motor vehicle
accident trauma.
I could find nothing wrong with her and her pregnancy test
was negative. Besides, she assured me beseechingly, kissing
her crossed fingers in the Latin way and looking at me coyly
from under her eyelids, she was not sexually active.
So on the spot, I invented a treatment. “Urinate in
a bowl, say ten Hail Mary’s over it while kneeling
down, place it under your bed tonight and your period will
come in three days.” She beamed with delight and off
she went.
Next!
One week later I was back on call and team leader Andres
sent a nurse to call me, my patient had returned and wanted
to talk to me. Apprehensively, I went down to Accident and
Emergency expecting the worst. She was there, with her mother,
“Oh Lord, save me!” with a huge smile on her face
and a covered dish of steaming white corn arepas. She had
done what I suggested and her period had come “exactamente”
as I said, “three days to the minute.”
The mother looked on smilingly as she offered the arepas,
the nurse giggled in the background, Andres looked bemused
and the rest of my “companeros” did their best
not to laugh. My reputation as the infertility doctor was
made. For the rest of the year any time any one came in
with a menstruation problem, “call the Trini”
was the shout and it was firmly believed that I would go
into gynecology after graduation.
I thought of all this as I read about a book, The Ladies
Companion, Or The English Midwife written in 1671 by a notorious
English physician with the likely name of William Sermon
and who recommended a number of bizarre cures for women’s
problems such as drinking wine mixed with hare spit or mouse
ear for infertility.
“Take
the slime that a hare will have about his mouth when he
eateth mallows and drink it in wine,” Sermon instructed
his readers. “Two hours after lie with your husband
and fear not but that you will conceive.”
The exactitude of the instructions are revealing. “Two
hours after!” What happens if hubby is not around or
can’t make? Your problem not mine.
Other fertility treatments read like a witch’s spell
book. “Take Mouse-ear three handful, Elicampane, Liquorice,
of each half ounce, Currants... boil them in two quarts
of old wine...of which drink a small draught every morning.”
William got a doctorate from Cambridge University in 1669
after he set up a thriving practice in Bristol following
the outbreak of the bubonic plague. The good Dr Sermon was
something of a self publicist and is said to have “never
missed an opportunity to market himself,” not unlike
many well known physicians.
He was particularly famous for his “Cathartique and
Diuretique” pills which claimed to cure all sorts of
ailments and were sold in outlets across the country for
eight shillings per packet, a sum of money many older gents
from Cobeau Town will remember with fondness from contact
with Jean Marabunta. The pills were said to be able to cure
“the Dropsie, Scurvie ...and all other sharp, salt
and watery humours.”
Knowing how much we believe in the power of an umbilical
cord, the infertility cure that will attract most attention
locally is undoubtedly this: “Take the navill-string
of a boy that is the first-born, which hath not touched
the ground, being well dryed, beat it to a powder and drink
it in wine.”
Why do people believe weird things? Herbal cures for all
illnesses! Brain food for SEA! Tonics! Worms in macaroni
pie! Both the pharmaceutical industry and the bush-doctor
make use of the astounding power of the human brain to fool
itself. Group pressure is important. If others believe the
same nonsense, it is difficult or dangerous to challenge
these beliefs. Ignorance may be key. If people understood
a bit more about how their body worked, they might not be
so gullible. But people also believe weird things because
it’s comforting, consoling and offer immediate gratification.
People like weird beliefs because they are simple. Weird
beliefs also satisfy the quest for significance: they satisfy
our moral needs and our desire that life be meaningful.
Weird things give us hope.
Why do I have the feeling that someone, somewhere, reading
this article, is about to try out one of these remedies?
But then, if the world were a logical place, men would ride
sidesaddle.
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