Medicine and Magic

The provincial seat of the most southern region in Kyrgyzstan is a bustling metropolis all of 13,000 citizens strong. When the airplane landed on the airstrip, we all walked down a flight of stairs to the tarmac and walked into a single room where we waited for our luggage. Men loaded the passengers’ bags onto a flat bed truck and drove over to a conveyor belt that began outside the room and ran inside through an opening in the wall. Once we had our bags, we walked out the far side of the room and were out of the airport.

The countryside is a wrinkled shirt of steep hills and soaring mountains. Villages lie tucked away in sprawling valleys colored green by generations of trees that people have planted over the years in otherwise treeless plains. The villages have names like Big Field, New Land, and Joke (and that’s not joke). Life moves at a gloriously slower pace here. There are fewer cars to be found here, meaning less exhaust and less dust hang in the air. City slickers like us from the country’s capital notice things like that.

You also notice the stares. Foreigners don’t often make it this deep into Kyrgyzstan. They’re a dime a dozen in the capital, but here, they might as well be glowing green and have three eyes. They’re not mean-spirited stares. At least that’s what you have to keep telling yourself. You’re just weird, so of course they look. You’d stare at you too if you were them.

We had come so that Laura could visit three small villages outside the provincial seat with a doctor who is working on a blood pressure project there.

Let me set the scene.

Colorfully clothed grandmothers in long, flowery dresses, vests, and headscarves make their way into the small mud brick clinics, some ascending the four or five steps at the door more easily than others. Clean shaven grandfathers in dress slacks, a belt, and a collared shirt, some with round bellies, all with gray hair, also come in and wait their turn to get their blood pressure taken.

“Are you taking your medicine daily?” Laura asks each patient.

“Oh, yes, everyday,” some say.

“When I feel my blood pressure is high, I take it. Otherwise, no,” others answer.

“This medicine only works if your take it every day. Does your head hurt? Are you feeling dizzy?” Laura asks.

Many have persistent headaches. A few are dizzy. Some hear ringing in their ears.

“Do you sleep well at night? Are you drinking enough water?”

In many cases, the headaches aren’t due to their blood pressure.

“You need to drink two liters of water every day,” Laura repeats and repeats.

“I can’t take my blood pressure medicine because I heard it will hurt my liver,” one says.

“No,” the doctor explains. “Blood pressure medicine doesn’t hurt your liver. In fact, if you don’t take it, you’re going to give yourself problems with your kidneys later on.”

“I took my medicine for a month and then felt better, so I stopped taking it,” some say.

“This is a medicine you’ll need to take for the rest of your life. Don’t stop taking it!” Laura responds.

“I was out working in the fields for a week, and I forgot to take my medicine with me.”

“Well, that would explain why your blood pressure is higher this month than the last month it was checked. See how the medicine works when you take it?”

“I went on a trip to the capital, so I didn’t take my medicine.”

“Wherever you go, always take your medicine with you.”

“I stopped taking my medicine when Ramadan started.”

“You can always take it at night with your evening meal when you break the fast.”

“I took my medicine for ten days after the last time the doctor came, and then I stopped.”

“This is medicine a person takes for life.”

“You know, there are problems on the boarder between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, but no one has died this time.”

Laura and the doctor ask about it and then direct the conversation back to the man’s blood pressure.

“I’m having bad headaches because of my high blood pressure,” one woman says.

The doctor checks and says, “Your pressure is really good today!”

“My legs hurt and feel cold,” the woman says. “That must be causing my headaches then.”

“Headaches and cold feet aren’t necessarily connected,” Laura explains.

“Then it must be because I wear this headscarf all the time,” the woman concludes.

“You should probably try drinking more water,” Laura says. “That helps headaches most of the time. You should drink at least two liters a day.”

“Oh, I don’t think I can drink that much water.”

Another woman asks if she should continue taking the cow’s bone marrow extract that a doctor had prescribed her.

A lengthy exchange ensues with no clear resolution.

It is awfully easy to poke fun at ideas that sound like little more than backward, misinformed superstition. The first time you chuckle. The hundredth time you clinch your jaw to prevent yourself from saying what you really think.

But reflection reveals a truth that is much more convenient to ignore, the truth that we modern Westerners are not as high and mighty and informed and logical as we might like to think.

In a podcast episode of Endless Thread called “Scabs, Pus, and Puritans,” the host says that the way “humanity usually fights disease is with a mix of folklore, faith, and hopefully a good bit of scientific knowledge.” And that’s true regardless of the culture, time period, or prevailing faith (or lack thereof).

Thus children in the United States are once more contracting the measles.

What are some of the backward, misinformed, superstitions we still love to subscribe to today? (Not necessarily about medicine.) We’d love to hear them. Write us a comment, and let us know what you think up.