The Washington times., 1923-01-31
PERSIAN CURES
CHECK HELP
BY DOCTORS
Tie Rags on Trees to Benefit
iII-AppIes in Ears-Womsn
and Babies Suffer.
BY International News Service.

BY International News Service.
NEW YORK, Jan. 29.-Rescuing
refugee typhoid sufferers from rag
tree" doctoring 10 one OF the unique
phases Of American relief work in
Persia.
The favorite remedy for all ills
there-tying a. piece Of che patients
garments, a colored cloth If pos
sible, on a tree sacred by its rarity
in the barren hills or by some
cause known only to Moslem
priests-has taken a heavy toll Of
lives, since the remedy ID a COM
pound of ignorance, superstition
and neglect
Christian refugees in American
care resort to the rag tree" only
occasionally, but the hundreds Of
Assyrians from the invaded Lake
Urumia basin, and Armenians. from
Turkish Armenia, suffer from the
epidemics which arise from Moslem
disregard of accepted curatives and
fondness for tying rags on
branches.
Riding into the mountains of
North Persia, where the Near East
Relief has Quartered several thou.
sand Christians in temporary homes
until the Turks and Kurds permit
them to return to their farms
along the Persian border, American
doctors are doing the double service
Of fighting superstition along with
disease.
Their efforts do not only heal
the wounds, which are frequent,
Persian 10
struggling with Tarter bands
whose sympathy with pan-Islamic
movements takes the form Of
raids on village herds-the doctors
must also keep the wounded from
applying such first-aid magic as the
freshly removed skins Of newborn
| lambs.
Apples in Ears.
DR.. Joseph P. Cochran, Of the
Near East Relief and American
Mission Hospital at Tabriz, visited
the mountain village Of Kargah,
where 270 Assyrian refugees re-
Gently had driven off the Shahse.
van band of Tartars and had saved
forty-nine or the fifty oxen loaned
to them for fall sowing by the re-
lief organization.
One of the first operations of the
Doctors visit was to take chunks
| Of sour apples out of the injured
ear of one of the Assyrian de-
tenders.
Rather than aid the man to reach
q physician in Tabriz, the Moslem
owner of the village had insisted
upon filling the ear with the best
| curative known to the oldest wo-
man servant.
To his son, who also had been
| injured in the raid, the village
chief had administered doses of
water mixed with pieces of paper
on which the old woman servant
had written excerpts from the
Koran.
THE good-intentioned old women
healers are our principal handicap"
commented DR.. Cochran.
Care of Babies Problem.
The mothers and children are
the Doctors chief concern, for the
combined efforts Of the relief or
ganizat1on and the American mis-.
sion are for child.saving primarily.
Strong men endure on starvation
rationa, but children, living on
coarse foods of hard times, are the
| victims of numerous ills.
There were mothers in the viii
lage who had nursed their babies
more than two years in the effort
to supply the lack of proper food.
Motherhood takes no special no.
bility in the land OF refugees. In
the face Of the hazardous times
children are being born as II to re-
plenish the thinned ranks of
Christian survivors Of massacres
Chief among the petitioners for
audience with the doctor were
women who whispered for some
thing to remove the blight of
sterility their suffering as refugees
had brought upon them.
Shrines sacred to maternity, near
Tabriz. particularly a famous stone
lion, are worn by the libations of
prayerful women.
Or. Cochran formerly was in st.
MAry's Hospital at Minneapolis.