Q J Med 2002; 95: 767-768
© 2002 Association of Physicians
Coda |
Plus ça change...
Og and Nyp sat by the fire outside the cave. Og, the older of the two medicine men, chewed hungrily at a metatarsal taken from the mammoth that the clan had hunted down the previous day. Nyp sat quietly, staring into the dying embers of the fire.
‘Medicine?’ Og said with scorn in his voice. ‘It isn't medicine as I remember it. In the old days, if a man was possessed by a evil spirit, you knew what a medicine man had to do. You consulted with the ancestors in your dreams. Then you did what they told you. You took a good flint arrowhead and a big stone, and you walloped a damn good hole into the man's skull. Next morning, he got up feeling right as rain, and the evil spirit had gone away.’
‘And what happens nowadays?’ Og spat a piece of mammoth gristle contemptuously into the ashes. ‘You have to go to all the elders of the clan, and ask their permission. They talk and they talk. They even ask the women what they think, for goodness' sake. Then one elder tells you that everyone these days is using bigger arrowheads and smaller stones. Another says the hole mustn't be wider than a baby's little finger. Some busybody—who wouldn't know an evil spirit if it smacked him in the face—says he's worried what the family will do if the sick person dies. Then everyone starts to prattle about the family's right to take retribution on you. Retribution! On a medicine man! Have you ever heard of anything so preposterous?’
Og reached into the pile of mammoth bones, helped himself to a clavicle, grasped it in both hands, and started to gnaw at it greedily. Nyp kept silent. He had heard Og talk like this before. He had great respect for Og and for all the medicine men of that generation. Before them, medicine had been truly Neanderthal. Now, thanks to men like Og, all of that had changed. It was impossible to imagine that mashed beetle poultices and infusions of ground sabre tooth had been totally unknown when Og had himself been a young man. How could one possibly have practised medicine without them? And when disease had decimated the clan, Nyp had seen Og in person sacrifice captives to the ancestors, with an elegance that took your breath away. But the world was changing, and men like Og could never halt progress.
‘I tell you one of the worst things,’ Og carried on. ‘In the old days, if a man was possessed and his local medicine man couldn't expel the spirit with simple remedies, you used to go to the victim's cave yourself. You thought nothing of it. When did you last hear of anyone doing that? They're all too bloody self-important these days. No one does cave visits any more.’
‘You could tell a lot from a cave, you know. You could see at once if the gods wanted someone to live or die. You looked at the paintings on the walls, for instance. They showed you a hell of a lot, those paintings. If all you saw was a charcoal sketch, with a few pathetic skinny rabbits, you didn't much fancy the patient's chances against an evil spirit. On the other hand, if you saw a bison hunt, drawn to last a few years maybe, you knew you were in business.’
Nyp had heard the arguments before but he wasn't convinced. He had seen these caves. Some were utterly disgusting, really unspeakable. They certainly weren't the kind of places you could sit down and grind together a decent mixture of wolf dung, fresh slugs and boar sperm, or any of the other cleansing potions that people liked to swallow these days.
Og tore one last morsel off the clavicle and then hesitated between a rib and a tibia. He chose the tibia. He ate a few mouthfuls and then spoke again. ‘Actually, there's something even worse than cave visits dying out. It's this new-fangled obsession with growing things. Our forefathers found plants for medicines just like they found their food. They picked things up from where the gods had left them. Nowadays you young people think you can steal the seeds and put them in the ground yourself. Then you just sit on your backsides and watch the plants come up. Tell me, do you honestly call that natural?’
‘What next, I ask you?’ he continued. ‘Soon you'll be capturing rams and forcing them to copulate with their ewes and make lambs to order, because you can't be bothered to lift a spear to catch your dinner. What kind of life would that be?’
Nyp sighed. The old man was getting carried away now, and just talking nonsense. By now, Og had finished his tibia and he was stretching his arm out again towards the pile of bones. Nyp had had enough. ‘Old man,’ he said, ‘you eat too much mammoth meat. It isn't good for your health.’
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