'It is true,' they said, 'our eyes are much better, but this black medicine you put in does not seem to be good, for we do not even feel it. A really good medicine must be strong and painful — then we really know that we are being cured.'
Of course I used mostly argyrol, which was very efficacious in these cases, but it was not painful. To appease my wavering clientele, I mixed some chinosol with argyrol. Chinosol may also be used as an eye medicine, but it hurts terribly for a few minutes. When they came next time I put this desirable medicine in their eyes. They collapsed on the floor, writhing in their agony. I awaited their reactions with some trepidation after they had recovered. Wiping their streaming eyes with their aprons, they sang in unison.
'Lah-da han! Hao da han! (How peppery! How good!)'
They were absolutely delighted: it was a wonderful experience, they all said. 'This is the drug! It is precious!' And then they came in droves, bringing their friends with them and asking for that same medicine or nothing. In long rows they sat in the courtyard and fell, as if struck by lightning, as soon as I had put in the drops. Afterwards they always laughed and chattered in their delight.
Whilst the sore eyes formed almost a women's monopoly, men came in an endless procession with their thighs and buttocks covered with scabies. They were so thick that they looked like fish scales. I had a big stock of sulphur ointment for this affliction, and at first I used to give them small pots of it, telling them to rub it in at night. In a week or two they used to come back complaining that the ointment was no good at all. Indeed, the awful scabs were still there. I had to change my tactics. With their pants down, I threw them on a low broad bench, face down, and rubbed them with all my might with powdered sulphur and vaseline, adding a pinch here and there as required. I rubbed until all the scabs were on the floor in little heaps, and the raw and bleeding flesh was clear. Then I rubbed some more sulphur in. The victims screamed and groaned,and staggered home hardly able to walk. After two or three such treatments their skin was as clear as that of a new-born babe. Of course, they were overjoyed and did not know how to thank me. It was hard and dirty work and I could not handle more than five such patients a day, so exhausting was it.
These skin diseases were, of course, a result of dirt and lack of personal hygiene. The Nakhi, both men and women, never took a bath. They washed only three times in their lives — when they were born, when they were about to be married, and when they were dead. In any other climate but Tibet and Likiang such a state of affairs would be intolerable. The people would smell like putrid corpses and would die of infections. But it was not really so bad in the dry mountain air of these high altitudes. The dirt simply dried and fell off in tiny scales. There was never any offensive odour from the people in the town and the villagers smelled like pinewood smoke. As for myself, I had a wooden tub made and took a hot bath in it in our little garden behind the house. I was partially visible over the wall and the women, passing along the crest of the hill, always laughed and shouted rude remarks. My cook took the bath after me in the same water, being too lazy to boil another lot. After him about ten of his Nakhi friends took turns until the water looked like pea-soup. Perhaps it was better than no bath at all.
Nakhi men also liked pain as a proof that the medicine or treatment was good. The men whom I cured of scabies were ecstatic in the description to their friends of the exquisite tortures they had endured at my hands and strongly advised them to come to my clinic with their sores. Some had deep ulcers on their legs. They said how much they suffered from these sores and hoped that I would cure them. Of course, they added, it must be awfully painful if the right treatment was applied, but they did not mind. I knew exactly what they meant. With big tweezers I tore off their scabs and dug out the wounds almost to the bone with cotton dipped in alcohol. They yelled and twisted. I filled the cavities with sulphathiazole, bandaged and sealed with elastoplast. Shaken but smiling, they always said what a marvellous experience it was. In three weeks or a month they were healed and I was invaded by others with still more horrible sores.
Goitre was a prevalent disease. However, it did not affect the Nakhi so much as the various tribes living along the Yangtze River and the Chinese emigrants from Szechuan who had settled in the forests and, of all places, in the great 11,000 feet deep Atsanko Gorge which the mighty Yangtze had cut for its passage through the Snow Range. Some goitres were of great size, pendant on both sides of the throat, creating an obscene resemblance to a backside. Of course, the best treatment for the goitre is its removal by surgical means. To do this these poor people would have to travel to Kunming and pay high fees at a hospital there. It would be useless to suggest such a trip to a man whose whole fortune perhaps amounted to only a couple of dollars. Even a trip to Likiang, without a reason, was an expensive undertaking for them. They could not remain in town for the length of the treatment. So something quick had to be devised. I gave them as large doses of potassium iodide as I thought possible, short of killing them. I confess I had some very close shaves. A Lissu witch-doctor lay for two days in semi-coma after the treatment; others had attacks of iodism. However, all survived and I saw them again a month later. The goitres were half the size and, after a few more treatments, became very small and hardly noticeable, but, I must admit, they were still there, and I never succeeded in removing them altogether.
Leprosy, now genteelly called Hansen's disease not to offend the sensibilities of those who believe that a change in the name makes the disease less virulent and frightening, was not common among the Nakhi. If there was any, it had been brought from outside, and about this the people were very watchful. I remember a case when a Nakhi, who had been residing for years somewhere beyond Hsiakwan, came back to his village to rejoin his family. He was seen to be in an advanced stage of leprosy, and the villagers came to him en bloc and asked him either to go back or to commit the ceremonial suicide. He chose the latter. He was given a bowl of the dread black aconite boiled in oil. Afterwards they had his body cremated.
The Minkia, White Lissu and Szechuanese settlers had a few cases of leprosy: the Tibetans too. But it was not so common as the missionaries' reports would lead us to believe. There was a small leprosarium near Erhyuen, 150 miles south, in the Minkia country, but it was only half filled. I am not a scientist and have not conducted any systematic research or read much about the causes that produce leprosy. However, during my many years of residence and travel in China and along the Tibetan border I had time to observe and compare the conditions under which the people who had the greatest incidence of leprosy, and those who had the least, lived and worked. There were some verdant and rich valleys, which looked a veritable paradise to the eye, and yet the people there had leprosy. Why? There were other places, seemingly less fertile and fortunate, where the inhabitants were quite healthy. Why? I visited and stayed often in the Moshimien valley in the Sikang province, where a great Roman Catholic leprosarium, housing 500 inmates, was situated. This hidden valley was surely one of the most beautiful places in the world. At least 8,000 feet up it was hemmed in by great snow mountains and the climate was a perpetual spring. Two roaring torrents of pure glacier water cascaded down both sides of the valley. There were vast forests on the foothills: carpets of flowers covered alpine meadows and clearings in the forest: some 6f the rarest lilies in the world grew wild along the ridges: the air was heavy with the fragrance of so many flowers, myriads of bees buzzed around and the soil was black and rich. The Catholic mission had all kinds of fruit-bearing trees in its orchards and the vegetables of all descriptions in the well-laid-out and watered gardens. There were luscious tomatoes and big pimentos along the rows of cabbages and French beans.