A desperate father in Yunnan Province has been attempting to cure his sick daughter’s disease by "smoking" her since he can't afford a bone marrow transplant for the six-year-old.
The father, Wei Shufu, resorted to the unusual measure of treating his sick child with smoke from burning medicinal herbs after she was diagnosed with Mediterranean Anemia in a Guangzhou hospital.
The bone marrow transplant the girl needs would cost RMB300,000 — a huge expense for a family with an annual income of less than RMB4,000.
Unable to afford the surgery, since both the child’s parents and grandparents, like most people in rural China, are farmers without health insurance, the father decided to take matters into his own hands.
After receiving advice from a patient he met in the hospital, he decided to try the smoke therapy. He built a bed from scratch for his daughter to lie on while he burns the herbs underneath.
The most worrisome part though, is not whether his daughter would catch on fire or if she would develop a respiratory illness if he keeps doing so, but the fact that he doesn’t have any medicinal know-how and his herbal formula is based on a medical treatise written about 500 years ago. Dating from the Ming Dynasty, Compendium of Materia Medica (Bencao Gangmu) has been regarded as the most complete and comprehensive medical book ever written in the history of traditional Chinese medicine. However, it is also a book that claims lead is not toxic and otters are “always male.”
[images via NetEase]
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