Surviving the Extremes: A Doctor's Journey to the Limits of Human Endurance by Kenneth Kamler Page B
Authors: Kenneth Kamler
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were cured, he’d undoubtedly go right back to the same river and be reinfected.
As the family was leaving, the little boy—who until then had not shown much vitality—asked if he could have a tennis ball. The wordhad gotten out. We gave him two. Holding one in each hand, he stepped easily into the canoe, satisfied with his visit. Maybe he wasn’t so sick after all.
Another canoe arrived one evening with an emergency trauma. An elderly appearing woman (though it was hard for me to judge age from the faces of these jungle-worn people) had been knocked in the head while attempting to tackle a pig she intended to prepare for dinner. She had been stunned and dizzy at first, and now had a headache. I did a complete neurological exam and then wanted to check her eyes. As I lifted my ophthalmoscope out of the tackle box, I found a cockroach running around inside. I unscrewed the handle of the scope, then used the bottom end to crush the roach. Neither my patient nor my audience of crew members thought anything of this; it was all quite natural to them. I imagined what the reaction would have been had this happened at home. My patient passed her exam easily. This was unsurprising, since she had canoed over by herself. I told her there wasn’t anything wrong with her. “I know,” she replied. “I just came for something for my headache.”
Antonio often watched me work. Once, after I had treated a routine problem, he came to me with a round, spiny fruit called an achiote. He broke it in half; the inside was filled with small, bright-red seeds. At first I thought he was offering me a snack, but then he pressed his thumb into the middle of one of the halves, squashing all the seeds, creating a cup with a red paste inside. He put some on his fingers and painted my face, drawing an upside-down T on my forehead, a line under each eye, and a line across my chin. The dye went on as easily as if he were using a grease pencil. “This makes you a witch doctor,” he said. The Indians watching him laughed. Antonio laughed as well, but I could sense his seriousness; his laugh, I suspected, was to show the younger generation that he understood he was hopelessly old-fashioned. I told him I was proud to wear the markings.
Antonio said that witch doctors used face paint for its psychological effect on their patients and that this was a big part of their medicines’ efficacy. I told him it was a big part of ours too. Our doctors don’t wear face paint, but they do wear white coats, to keep that same separation between themselves and the people they treat, and theyoften use a big medical word when a simple one would do, to give an impenetrable, mystical quality to the knowledge they possess. Maintaining that aura of authority is essential, so that a sick person can believe his doctor has the power to make him better. Much as I would have liked wearing my witch doctor paint every time I saw a patient in the jungle, it would have looked silly in a camp full of scientists, amid natives who wore clothes that looked like leftovers from a Kmart closeout sale. Though they had practical value, these garments were exotic artifacts produced in mysterious ways by a culture that obviously controlled powers far greater than those controlled by the local medicine man. Their proliferation eroded respect for traditional customs and polluted the jungle.
In spite of our Western costumes and our comfortable camp, however, we never forgot we were in the jungle. The daily rains and steam-bath humidity turned our
campground
into a slippery, muddy ooze. It was impossible to stay either clean or dry; one by one we succumbed to the allure of the Indians’ bath boat.
Every afternoon the Indians took a canoe out to the center of the lake, soaped themselves up, and, to our astonishment, dove into the water to rinse off. We had caught, and released, more than enough crocodiles to know what was in the water with them. Moreover we had been catching and eating
As the family was leaving, the little boy—who until then had not shown much vitality—asked if he could have a tennis ball. The wordhad gotten out. We gave him two. Holding one in each hand, he stepped easily into the canoe, satisfied with his visit. Maybe he wasn’t so sick after all.
Another canoe arrived one evening with an emergency trauma. An elderly appearing woman (though it was hard for me to judge age from the faces of these jungle-worn people) had been knocked in the head while attempting to tackle a pig she intended to prepare for dinner. She had been stunned and dizzy at first, and now had a headache. I did a complete neurological exam and then wanted to check her eyes. As I lifted my ophthalmoscope out of the tackle box, I found a cockroach running around inside. I unscrewed the handle of the scope, then used the bottom end to crush the roach. Neither my patient nor my audience of crew members thought anything of this; it was all quite natural to them. I imagined what the reaction would have been had this happened at home. My patient passed her exam easily. This was unsurprising, since she had canoed over by herself. I told her there wasn’t anything wrong with her. “I know,” she replied. “I just came for something for my headache.”
Antonio often watched me work. Once, after I had treated a routine problem, he came to me with a round, spiny fruit called an achiote. He broke it in half; the inside was filled with small, bright-red seeds. At first I thought he was offering me a snack, but then he pressed his thumb into the middle of one of the halves, squashing all the seeds, creating a cup with a red paste inside. He put some on his fingers and painted my face, drawing an upside-down T on my forehead, a line under each eye, and a line across my chin. The dye went on as easily as if he were using a grease pencil. “This makes you a witch doctor,” he said. The Indians watching him laughed. Antonio laughed as well, but I could sense his seriousness; his laugh, I suspected, was to show the younger generation that he understood he was hopelessly old-fashioned. I told him I was proud to wear the markings.
Antonio said that witch doctors used face paint for its psychological effect on their patients and that this was a big part of their medicines’ efficacy. I told him it was a big part of ours too. Our doctors don’t wear face paint, but they do wear white coats, to keep that same separation between themselves and the people they treat, and theyoften use a big medical word when a simple one would do, to give an impenetrable, mystical quality to the knowledge they possess. Maintaining that aura of authority is essential, so that a sick person can believe his doctor has the power to make him better. Much as I would have liked wearing my witch doctor paint every time I saw a patient in the jungle, it would have looked silly in a camp full of scientists, amid natives who wore clothes that looked like leftovers from a Kmart closeout sale. Though they had practical value, these garments were exotic artifacts produced in mysterious ways by a culture that obviously controlled powers far greater than those controlled by the local medicine man. Their proliferation eroded respect for traditional customs and polluted the jungle.
In spite of our Western costumes and our comfortable camp, however, we never forgot we were in the jungle. The daily rains and steam-bath humidity turned our
campground
into a slippery, muddy ooze. It was impossible to stay either clean or dry; one by one we succumbed to the allure of the Indians’ bath boat.
Every afternoon the Indians took a canoe out to the center of the lake, soaped themselves up, and, to our astonishment, dove into the water to rinse off. We had caught, and released, more than enough crocodiles to know what was in the water with them. Moreover we had been catching and eating
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