The bone setter

If you are a physio, imagine the kind of sinking feeling you have when your patient tells you they are, or have been, seeing an osteopath or chiropractor 'to have their bones and joints realigned' and multiply that by quite a lot and you might start to understand the trepidation with which I have come to regard the bone setter. If you can get a history from your patient it might sometimes include a visit to the bone setter, but despite considerable effort, I never managed to uncover any more detail than this from any of my patients. So I decided last week to pay him a visit myself.

The morning got off to a slow start because the bone setter was off burying a relative (I don't think he was responsible on this occasion for their need to be buried) so I sat around with all the patients for an hour or so before we started, pretending to watch a video about their work. They have several stone buildings partitioned into rooms - some small, some big - that patients stay in if they are unable to walk; otherwise they are seen as outpatients - daily or weekly.

Some people end up seeking further help at the bone setter once they have been discharged from the hospital, unable to walk and without follow up while others bypass the hospital completely and bring their fractures to him directly. I asked whether patients had X Rays - I didn't really find out the answer but was told that X Rays tend to discourage patients and something about the outside of the bone not showing up on X Ray. I hoped this was a language related misunderstanding.

I may be grossly generalizing but essentially the treatmens offered by the bone setter comprise acupuncture (I did not witness this but understand that there is, alarmingly, a element of electricity involved), herbs, and mobilization (or immobilization). Leg fractures (radiographically diagnosed or otherwise) are strapped into a wooden case - they may be 'tweaked' first until the legs look straight - and then patients are instructed not to move at all for 3 weeks. After 3 weeks they are instructed to get up and start walking as able -which is not usually very able. Funny, that....

Herbs are applied to the site of pain, covered with a leaf and taped into place:

"What do the herbs do?" I ask
"They help the fracture heal"
"How do they do that?"
"They make the pain go away"
"Why does the pain go away?"
"Because the patient gets better"

...and so on, goes the circular conversation that follows most of my questions. My observations of patients demonstrating (albeit in an agonized silence) what could only be described as a true 10/10 on a visual analogue scale, as the bone setter yanked their body parts into the desired position, did not do a lot to convince me.

Coming out of one of the rooms, I went flying down the steps which are really not designed for anyone who isn't looking where they are going (or might have a mobility impairment for example!). I recovered my feet, noting that I must be more careful considering that this was possibly the very worst place to sustain an injury.

So anyway, I spent the morning watching herbs and leaves being put on, first the outpatients who had queued all morning to sit in the painful hot seat, and then those housed in the various annexes, through which we marched (armed with our herbs and leaves). All ailments appear to qualify for herbs: fractures, soft tissue injuries, muscular aches or whatever else. I am not sure that the bone setter really knew what 'whatever else' was, and I began to feel, as Julianna had warned me before I went, that I really had entered the twilight zone.