The Opelousas courier., 1889-01-26
THE MOXA
A Japanese Remedy for P1faly'
sis That Sears the FIe1h.
Resorting to Torturous Methods
to Cure Human us.

While we lunched in the .ipen quad
rangle before the temple at Hokohama,
japan, groups of CHEEKY JaIlnese came
in chattering as gayly as ami picnickers
could wish to, took off the iHstraw sam
dals, washed their feet, and disappeared
in jolly parties to 1he intfsior of the
temple. When we dropped our shoes
and followed to the one upper room, we
found our jolly chatterers all there, sit
ting in rows with their faces to the
walls. All were stripped to the waist,
and the old priest made marks on their
backs in sacrel characters to indies ate
where the moxa should be burned.
Following him came a small boy with
what appeared to be very sticky dough
in one hand. With dexterous fingers
this youngster pinched off a bit of
dough, rolled it into a small cone, and
stuck it over the priests mark. After
him came a staid, stoical ycungster,
WAo III lAiO LlOSb SOAu- DlOVASN Wdyp
touched a match to the tip of the moxa
| cone, and went down the lines giving
lights. It burned without flame, a slow
red glow like charcoal, consuming the
cone down to the flesh, where it sizzled
and smoked for a few seconds, that
must have seemed yearssto the victims.
Soaring with a red-hot iron would w a
quick and humane treatment compared
to this slow-eating fire of the moxa.
The men and women that I watched
for the few minutes that I COULD endure
it, stood it %hcroically, but by the ten
sion of every muscle in their backs and
arms one could judge of their agonA1
One old mau folded his arms, bent his
head over, and INDUCED in suppressed
chuckles that varied with groans and
hysterical ha! ha! has! A woman
buried her face in a blue cotton towel
and made no sign or movement, while
two moxa cones were burning down and
into her flesh. A young man started to
rock to and fro when ths fire began en-
tering into his very bones, but soon
stopped it, braced himself, and sat
motionless. The priest, having set his
seal on his victims, sat down by a
b%razier, put on his big spectacles, and
was soon lost in reading a pious book,
wholly indifferent to the row of backs
frizzling beside him.
This mine priest has some secret or
composition for his mox dough that
has kept it in favor for manv years, and
about the only revenue of the temple Is
from his patients fees. For rheuma-
tism, lumbago and such aches and ills it
is most beneficial, and gives quick relief
to any one heroic en- ugh to endure it.
The Japanese resort , moxa for almost
everything that ails them, and one sees
coolies with their backs aud the calves of
their legs covered with moxa scars. For
eign doctors have discovered the virtues
of the treatment for certain things, and
in Paris many cases of paralysis have
been successfully treated, Charles Sum-
ner having been one of the IA
nous casss, whose paralyzed nerves
were revived by moxa. A variation
of the treatment used in Paris under the
name Of moxa consists in burning with
white-hot irons, which is much less
! painful than with paste cones, and
Clara Morris was one of the best adyer-
tised subjects undergoing the white-iron
moxa. When the patients descended
from the moxa room, put on their san
dals and muttered a sullen prayer to-
ward the open door Of the temple, they
were hardly to be identified, with the
gay people who had arrived earlier, and
when they walked, it was plain by the
way they held their shoulders that the
raw places still smarted. -[Globe. Demo
crat.