Ignorance is Bliss

Victor driving off to visit a patient

Victor had a very wry sense of humour, which was more often than not, lost on the simple village folk he dealt with on a daily basis.He would make outrageously droll statements with such a dead pan face, that most times it took a minute to grasp the hilarity of what he was saying. In the years he practised in Saraya he encountered superstition and ignorance of such unbelievable magnitude, that when I once suggested he write a book about his experiences, he said  people would think he was completely daft and his stories absolutely implausible!
One such incident took place on a cold wintry day, when Victor was called out to attend to an ailing old man in a neighbouring village. When he entered the small dank hut, he found the patient lying on a 'charpai', shivering with fever, whilst one of his sons stood by, waving a large bunch of 'neem' leaves to and fro over his father's head. When asked why the young man was doing this, since the weather was icy and the sick old man's teeth were chattering in the freezing temperature, he was solemnly told that evil spirits would be kept from entering the body by the continuous motion of the make shift fan .
 After attending to the afflicted soul, Victor gathered up his bag to leave and noticed all the family members huddling around with concern, eager to know his diagnosis. He told them that the old man would be fine and he would return in a few days to check on his progress. As he passed the young lad, still frantically swishing the branches around, he casually stated that as far as he knew, spirits emerged from under the bed if they were intent on possessing someone, and not from above.
When he went back a couple of days later to see how his patient was doing, he was absolutely astounded to see the invalid's son lying scrunched up under his father's cot, flapping the branch fan as best he could in the very limited space below the low slung 'khatiya'. With a completely straight face Victor remarked that he was now certain no spirit, in any shape or form, would dare trouble the old man.

Another time a patient suffering from bronchial pneumonia came to the hospital to consult Victor, who wrote out a lengthy prescription and told the man to return for a check up after finishing the course of medication. A few days later he was surprised to see the villager stumble back in an even worse condition. When asked if he had been taking all the tablets as instructed, the simpleton answered in the affirmative. He went on to explain in great detail how he was shredding bits of the prescription into hot water and drinking it at regular intervals. He was not convinced when it was explained to him that it was not the paper he had to swallow but the pills - after all 'doctor sahib' had written on the 'parchi' with his own hands and that was a good enough remedy for him.

On another occasion an infant was brought into the hospital with a badly swollen face. On examining the child Victor discovered  a hard substance completely blocking the little one's ear passage. When he asked the apprehensive parents what they had done, they answered that the baby's ear had been oozing pus so they had poured in some cement to stop the flow. The concrete had set into a solid lump and they were relieved  that the trickling muck had stopped, but were baffled as to why the child's face had swollen up. It took all of Victor's skill and  ingenuity to remove the hardened mass from the squalling tot's ear.

Victor was one of those rare doctors who did not believe in over prescribing medication, but the naive village folk were psychologically not satisfied until they were given a shriekingly painful injection or a large bottle of nasty tasting tonic. Victor's assistant Baleshwar had his own recipe,where he would mix together the contents of a variety of bottles to make an unpalatable concoction, which would be distributed free of cost to the weak and malnourished natives.The effectiveness of this elixir was so amazing that they had to give it an official name. It came to be known as the GOK solution - God Only Knows solution.