DISEASE AND LEECHCRAFT.
Serious maladies are inflicted by spirits or induced by the vitiation
of the triple force (vâta, pita, sema) which pervades the human
body. In the former case they are cured by devil dances and in the
latter by drugs. There are, however, numerous minor complaints where
folk-remedies are employed.
A cure for boils is to procure without speaking from a smithy water in
which the red hot iron has been cooled and apply it to the affected
parts.
For whooping cough is given gruel made of seven grains of rice
collected in a chunam receptacle (killôtê) without uttering a word
from seven houses on a Sunday morning.
To cure a sprain a mother who has had twins is asked to trample the
injured place, without informing any one else, every evening for a
couple of days.
A touch with a cat's tail removes a sty, and a toothache is cured
by biting a balsam plant (kûdalu) uprooted with the right hand,
the face averted.
When one is hurt by a nettle, cassia leaves (tôra) are rubbed on the
injured place with the words "tôra kola visa neta kahambiliyâva visa,
etc." (Cassia leaves are stingless but prickly is the nettle).
A firefly's bite requires "the mud of the sea and the stars of the sky"
to effect a cure--a cryptic way of saying salt and the gum of the eye.
Ill effects of the evil mouth and evil eye are dispelled by various
means:--either a packet made of some sand trodden by the offender is
taken three times round the head and thrown into a pot of live coals;
or a receptacle containing cocoanut shell ashes, burnt incense,
and a few clods of earth from a neighbouring garden is buried in
the compound.
Patients suffering with small pox or a kindred disease are kept in a
separate hut, cloth dyed in turmeric and margosa leaves are used in
the room; and after recovery an infusion of margosa leaves is rubbed
on their heads before they are bathed.
A string of coral shows by the fading of its colour that the wearer is
ill; to prevent pimples and eruptions a chank is rubbed on the face,
when washing it.
When there is a difficult child-birth the cupboards and the doors
in the house are unlocked. For infantile convulsions, a piece of the
navel cord is tied round the child's body.
If one has warts on his body, stones equal in number to them are tied
to a piece of rag and thrown where three roads meet; the person who
picks up the packet and unties it gets the warts and the other becomes
free of them.
When a person gets a hiccough, he gets rid of it by holding up his
breath and repeating seven times "ikkayi mâyi Gâlugiya, ikka, hitalâ
man âvâ" (Hiccough and I went to Galle; he stayed back and I returned).
Extreme exhaustion will ensue if the perspiration from one's body is
scraped off; the cure is to swallow the collected sweat.