It should be a very shocking news that an eighteen months old child was given a torturous treatment of bleeding to death for its hernia. The child was bleeding to death, and but for the benevolent social worker, who intervened in time, the child would have died!
The Tragic Incident in South India
The child's ear was poked with a rough needle, used for stitching jute sack bags, causing profuse bleeding. For which a piece of old dirty cloth was inserted by a cruel country quack. A hen was offered to appease the evil spirit that caused the disease and the blood of the killed hen was applied to the wound on the ear!
Kandasmy, who was working in a cracker factory in a small village near Sivakasi the “Cracker town” in South India, took his eighteen month old male child to the primary health center near his village for a urinary complaint. The child had some urinary problem and the doctor there in the government health center diagnosed hernia. A surgery was suggested. But frightened by a local people that the child's disease was due to a curse from a demon or some evil spirit, the illiterate parents took the child to a quack who readily suggested a torture therapy. The ignorant parents had no other alternative except to follow the quack. Moreover, they were afraid of the expenses for the surgery and the other formalities in a government hospital!
Even in the Twenty-First Century
There are still lot of such torture treatments going on! Torture, many times, is still handled as a tool of therapy. Flogging, caning, whipping with certain plant sticks, bleeding caused in some way, burning, amputating, etc. have been followed by some ancient tribes in the human history and are still followed as methods of treatment in some ignorant communities all over the world especially in Africa and Asia. Stating that they are purifying the bad energies in the body and mind or purging the stomach, or causing better circulation of blood, these torture therapists inflict all these tortures on ignorant victims who are already mentally prejudiced.
Here are some examples of torture therapies:
- It is quite common even in these days to find insane patients treated with such cruel methods of flogging, whipping, binding in chains, etc.
- In the history of Europe we have seen how flogging was used as a therapy. In the fourteenth century, during the Black Death plague in Europe, flogging was recommended both for preventing and curing it. This kind of torture is still followed in India in treating insane patients. There is a belief that the evil spirit can be cast away and the insanity can be cured by flogging with “erukkau”(calotropis gigantee) sticks!
- If a person is attacked by epilepsy, he is branded in his hand with a hot iron.
- The practice of scarring with hot iron for jaundice is still alive in many parts of India!
- Many follow frightening therapies which I have not included in my list above, which are still more dangerous and complicated!
Why these Torture Therapies?
Illiteracy, ignorance, superstitions and prejudices are the main causes of such torture treatments. Traditional practices have a stronger role to play in these therapies. People still have the belief that diseases are caused by the anger of gods or by some evil spirits!
It is time for the Global Family to come forward to put an end to such torture therapies! Education, awareness, encouraging friendship among nations, cooperating with the good hearted Good Samaritans, etc. only can bring these practices to an end.
