Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer

Don Elijio nodded and said, “The Jackass Bitters is good, but you
should have bathed her first, then applied a dried powder mixture of Jackass
Bitters and Cancer Herb. Those two are very powerful together. Do you
know the Cancer Herb?”
“No hermanito, little brother, I don’t,” she said.
“Well, it’s little, only a foot or so off the ground, with a little rounded
leaf and a fluffy stick of a flower that looks like a tail,” he told her.
She shook her head silently and said, “No, I haven’t seen that one.”
“No matter, you can come back tomorrow and Rosita will go with you
to the old logging road and show it to you.”
After he explained how she was to combine the leaves of both plants for
the hot tea bath, he launched into a complicated prescription for the fungus.
He told her to take equal parts of the leaves of both plants, toast them over
the hearth until very dry, and pass them through a sieve to make a fine
powder. Then she was to cover the fungus with castor oil and sprinkle the
powder over the area, using a feather to make sure it went deep into the
holes. He told Doña Juana to be sure that her granddaughter kept her foot
covered with a sock for the night. In the morning, she was to soak a sock in
the hot tea and wear it all day long.
“That will do it for sure,” he assured them.
The women nodded in respectful agreement.
“Is that all, then?” Panti asked, stretching out and glancing over at his
hammock.
“Well, with your permission, I would like you to examine the big girl
here. She has too much gas and indigestion all the time. She is constipated
too.”
Following them into the examining room with a lantern, I held it over
Don Elijio’s head as he dug deeply into her abdomen, giving her the classic
ciro massage. The teenager squirmed under the pressure, but Don Elijio
held fast.
The fingers of both hands dove into the soft flesh around her belly
button, disappearing up to his second knuckles. Then he twisted his hands
clockwise, pressing as he prayed.
“You have dry ciro, my child,” he said as he turned her over on her
stomach and massaged her back and legs with quick, squeezing movements.
“Rosita, go get her a mixture of Man Vine, Contribo, and Guaco. That
will taste strong, child, but it will serve you well.”