traditional healing

My host father is a healer. He sets bones, fixes dislocations, sprains and strains, and treats various maladies including colds, arthritis and slow to heal injuries. He’s pretty darn good at bone-setting. I’ve seen him do it, and I’ve seen the results. They are impressive. A compound fracture that protruded the skin is now a mostly functioning arm. Still weak, but hopefully it’ll get there. He makes splints out of cardboard and string, or bamboo and string.
He also brands people. With a nail, and in conjunction with a blessing. It’s called "kt"-ing. This technique can be used on just about anything. On the belly for a cold, on the place of injury or pain for a slow-to-heal break or strain or arthritis or what have you. I’m beginning to wonder what percent of the people here have scars from it. Probably quite a few. The blessing is interesting. He uses a little crystal, of salt, maybe, and waves it in a circle over the area to be treated, while muttering some God-phrases that I really can’t make out at all. He then sticks the crystal in his mouth and blows/spits forcefully over the area three times, says a parting blessing and then commences the branding. After the branding comes another blessing. It seems to have some effect, or at least people think so, for they come to him from all over the village and from other villages, too.
He also has a formidable array of knowledge about various causes and effects, some of which is probably valid and some of which probably isn’t. The other night, after watching him work on a shoulder and wrist, I mentioned that I had had a screw put in my foot to fix a break. He asked if I had taken it out, and I replied no. "But you must take it out!" he said, "or you will get shellal!" And illustrated by shaking his hand like a feeble old person in the grips of Parkinson’s disease. I didn’t quite know what to say… For certainly if this were an important consideration my doctor would have told me. But my host father simply brushed that off with an "ur isin!" ("He doesn’t know!") But he should know. Doctors pay an awful lot in schooling to know just that kind of thing. I can only imagine the lawsuits… "Repair of compound fracture of femur causes Parkinson’s!" No, I don’t think that’s a good cause and effect… but how does one explain that if that were the case, someone would have figured it out by now??? I gave it up as a bad job that time. Next time, we shall see.