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Robert Like (2)
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Common sense may not be commonly shared. It reminded me of a story of a Cape Verdian patient. I had just come back from doing fieldwork in the Azores Islands, Portugal. And a woman who was in her, I guess, mid forties or fifties was admitted to the neurology service for an uncontrollable tremor. But the story was that she had gone through and did a big workup and nothing could be found. People were wondering if this might have been conversion hysteria of some sort.

In any event, at that time, I tried to find out from the woman what her beliefs were about what had caused the problem. A story came out that I had certainly never heard before. It turns out two years ago she had fallen and sustained colles fractures in both of her wrists. She went into casts, came out of the casts some months later, and it turned out that one of the arms was paralyzed. We really couldn't explain why. She went around to different alternative healers, she went to physical therapists, and nothing really helped. She went to some spas, and after coming out one day from a warm bath into some cold air, her arm began to shake.

In asking her what her beliefs were, she said well, I think this might be caused by something on the island called "sleeping blood." She said, when we have a traumatic injury, the normal blood may sneak out, turn black, and block off circulation, and over time if the blood is not removed, it may back up and cause heart attacks, strokes, glaucoma and all kinds of things. Well what sort of treatment do you use? Well, we would take tea to calm the nerves, people would say prayers, and we would make an incision in the shape of a cross, and take out the blood. (I replied that) we really do not have any experience with this particular illness here but perhaps there is something we could do for you. So what we did, was we gave her some medicines for her nerves, and then we did a venapuncture over the area, sent some blood to the laboratory for analysis, and the rest we put in a cup, and let it clot, and showed it to her, and just said we hoped she felt better. The next day the tremor was gone but t he paralysis was still there so the story got a little more complicated.

In asking her about the cause of the fall, she said she believed it had not been an accident. (She said) her sister was jealous of her somewhat better economic situation, had given her the evil eye and put some kind of curse on her. Because she had bad thoughts about her sister, god had punished her in some way. To make a long story short, there were certain saints that she was very close to from the Roman Catholic tradition that she prayed to; we actually did this together. We went on home visits after she left the hospital physical therapy and got the family involved. Over a period of months, she began to use her arm again.