16. IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH
In the following we shall describe the traditional treatment of some aches and pains. Many seem to have been fairly successful against traditional diseases and a few were even, at least in the eyes of the Andamanese, helpful in relieving the suffering caused by the new diseases introduced after 1858. It should be mentioned here that most treatment was applied not by medicine men or women but by the nearest relatives, generally husbands or wives, of the patients.
Traditional Andamanese medicine was entirely symptomatic, i.e. it attacked the symptoms rather than the cause of a disease, just as most of modern medicine until very recently did - and to a fair extent still does today.
Fever was never fought by scarification but instead by preparing a bed made of the leaves of trigonostemon longifolius, entada scandens or other plants. Leaves of the same plants were also boiled and crushed, the resulting hot mash being rubbed on the body continuously as long as the fever lasted, with spouse, relatives and friends taking turns. The sufferer was made to breathe in the smell of the mash as much as possible and to drink vast quantities of chu-lnga. Married patients had red ochre painted on upper lips and neck. If the fever still did not get better or was accompanied by pains in the chest or head, the chauga-ta was tied tightly around the affected part. Pain was thought to be caused by evil spirits which could be chased way only by magic.
Sufferers from colds, coughs and catarrhs remained at home, close to the warming fire. Drinking sea water was regarded as a remedy for coughs, as was the chewing of the thick part of the long alpinia sp. leaves. The bitter juice of the plant was swallowed and the remains of the chewed parts tied around the neck of the patient. If this did not work then the same procedure was followed with the debarked stem of another plant, calamosagus laciniosus. This medication in Aka Bea was called chu-lnga and was widely used.
Rheumatism and many kinds of paralysis of the limbs were treated with chu-lnga and the chauga-ta. If this did not help, the affected limbs were massaged and the chu-lnga mash turned into a sort of warm shampoo. If there was still no improvement, scarification was the method of last resort. It has been noted that many rheumatic attacks seem to have left their victims without the full use of their limbs after recovery.
The preferred medicine against diarrhea was clay, kaolin-like powders or pulverized bone ash while bee larva, certain tree barks and the fruits of two trees were eaten to relieve constipation.
Pulmonary tuberculosis (consumption or phthisis) was a serious disease of the Andamanese and seems to have been with them from ancient times. One or more chauga-ta were tied tightly to the painful parts, melted bees' wax was then passed rapidly over the sufferer. The drops of hot wax falling onto the body were left there until they had worn off by themselves. A sort of massage, pressure by the hands, was also applied by members of the same sex while another attendant sucked at the skin of the patient. If all this did not work, scarification was used. The procedure for tuberculosis was employed for many other kinds of internal aches and pains.
Skin diseases were made bearable, if not cured, by the application of warmed-up stones on the afflicted parts while sufferers from sore throat had to eat ochre clay and were treated externally with hot packages. Burns were treated with the external application of cool clay.
Epilepsy was known to the Andamanese and among the Aka Bea at least it was treated by sprinkling cold water over the sufferer, followed by scarification of the brows. The Onge, on the other hand, regarded epileptics as possessed by a spirit capable of being used as an oracle. Among Onge, epileptic attacks were watched reverently by all and not treated as a disease.
Scorpions are small and relatively harmless in the Andamans so that little attention needed to be paid to their stings. Being bitten by one of the large centipedes was a different matter; their bites are not life-threatening to the average healthy adult but are so excruciatingly painful as to appear very much so to the unfortunate victims. The Andamanese thought highly of human urine as a remedy.
It is not surprising to find that very few cases are known of mentally disturbed or retarded people, hunchbacks or the otherwise physically handicapped. In the absence of infanticide, which is not known from the Andamans, afflicted children would be unlikely to survive infancy in the conditions of a primitive society. Yet it is still remarkable that there are no known cases of those genetic abnormalities that do not seriously reduce life expectancy, among them albinism (the inability to produce pigment) and polydactyly (more than the normal number of toes and fingers). Squinting, cleft palates and supernumerary teeth have not been reported while prognathism and hare-lip seem to have been rare. Only one case of erythrism (the prevalence of red in skin or hair) has ever been reported among Andamanese and that was a slight case.
Not strictly a medical subject is the Andamanese reaction to sneezing which has been described as follows
They [the Andamanese] have no peculiar ideas in reference to yawning, hiccoughing, spitting, or eructating, and hissing is unknown.
To sneeze is auspicious, and therefore regarded with favour. When any one sneezes the bystanders ask, "Who is thinking of you?" to which the person replies by naming some absent friend, or, should he be alone when he sneezes, he says, "Here I am at ---" (naming the place).
It is certainly an odd - and as far as the author is aware largely unexplained and unresearched - fact that most (all?) human cultures react to sneezing with standardized remarks, often wishes for good health ("Gesundheit", "Santé") or religious expressions ("Bless you").
In any life, the hour arrives when all remedies, charms and tender loving care must fail. The Negrito of the Philippines, the Aeta, regarded death as a necessity; they did not attribute magic reasons to it. Their Negrito relatives in the Andamans saw this differently, especially in the case of sudden unexpected death. Sudden death was attributed to the malign influence of erem-changaba or juruwin, spirits of the deceased. Death of sunstroke seems to have been fairly common and was thought to be caused by an invisible arrow thrown at the head of the victim by evil spirits. A rather apt picture. There was no such clear-cut attitude towards the slower and less surprising death following sickness.
The Andamanese resistance to pain was reported to be remarkably high, at least when compared to that of visiting scientists. The rapidity with which wounds healed was also thought remarkable. A general lack of what modern societies call hygiene kept the immune-system of traditional Andamanese in permanent intensive training.
The presence of flies in the jungles of Little Andaman signaled the proximity of an Onge village or of a group of Onge on the move. Flies accompanied them everywhere and as one observer reported in the early 1950s:
