How I became a hunter of medicines: I didn't trust the powers of natural remedies until a handful of culinary spices saved me

Natural Health, Oct-Nov, 2001 by Chris Kilham

ON A SPIRITUAL JOURNEY to the Himalayas one January several years ago, I became sicker than I've ever been in my life. Wading across a chilly section of the seemingly pristine Gautam Ganga, a sacred river in the Himalayan foothills, I took a drink of the water. It was bracingly cold and delicious. It was also, apparently, a running stew of potent pathogenic microbes. With that unfortunate act I had picked up the stereotypical tourist's disease, dysentery, a grueling and potentially serious ailment that causes fever, aches, and constant diarrhea.

Far from Western hospitals, I had little hope of relief. But with a mixture of local spices, an Ayurvedic doctor healed me. I was so astonished by my experience that I decided to become a professional medicine hunter--one who tracks down non-Western plants that are used as medicines. Here's how a handful of spices changed my life.

Deep in Trouble

It was my first trip to India and Nepal. Curious about the spirituality of the region, I had come East as a tourist with an admittedly haphazard plan: to spend six weeks visiting as many important holy sites as I could find.

About a month into my journey, I took that drink from the Gautam Ganga. The next day, I struggled for more than an hour to sit up in bed in my small and shabby hotel room in nearby Bareilly, India. The germs in my river drink had invaded my body like hacking and plundering warriors. Eventually I was able to overcome my headache and heavy limbs and stand just long enough to shamble to the toilet, which I visited countless times that morning. I took some Pepto-Bismol, but to little effect. So I just suffered, determined to keep on with my trip.

The symptoms worsened after I boarded a train later that day for an overnight haul to the Indian city of Benares (now called Varanasi). Dragging my bag, I toiled behind the conductor as if slogging through a chest-high swamp. I was unsteady on my feet, feverish, and dehydrated.

We stopped at my sleeper compartment. "Very good, this is the one, sir," he announced. He rolled open the door of the small room, revealing 10 passengers inside enjoying a picnic. Their bags sat stacked on the bunk--my bunk--and a paisley cloth and chapatis, rice, dal, tea, and other Indian dishes covered the floor. I lost it. "I need to test!" I shouted. The conductor shooed out the picnickers.

Benares is one of the most important places of pilgrimage in India. Devout Hindus aspire to die there, believing that to vacate one's mortal frame in Benares guarantees an eternal resting place. As I lay half-alive on my train bunk, I mused over the possibility that I might soon learn whether that belief was true.

Somewhere around 2 a.m., I awoke with a start as a spasm flexed through my bowels. My diarrhea had returned. Regarding the incident as one more humiliation in a degrading illness, I shuffled down the hall to a dirty, cramped toilet compartment. The open hole in the floor proved to be convenient for my circumstance. I removed my clothing and stuffed it through, dumping jeans, underpants, and a T-shirt on the tracks, probably near Faizabad. I spent the next half-hour washing myself with a hard nugget of soap and a trickle of cold water. The scene was pathetic, but I found it remarkably funny. I leaned against a wall, shivering with fever and laughing until tears streamed down my face. Finally, with no dignity left, I wandered back to my cabin naked.

A Search for Relief

Once in Benares, I spotted a homeopathic clinic and sought treatment there, but the remedies didn't help. After several delirious days in the city visiting holy sites and enduring ceaseless diarrhea, I traveled to Katmandu, Nepal. Checking into a comfortable hotel, I inquired at the desk about a good doctor. The clerk told me of an Ayurvedic physician nearby, a man named Mana Vajra Bajracharya.

Ayurveda was not what I had in mind. I knew that this system of medicine is thousands of years old and continues to help millions of Indians and Nepalese today. I had even learned much about Ayurvedic remedies after spending time at an American ashram with a distinguished Ayurvedic scholar, Swami Vedavyasananda. But I had no personal experience with Ayurveda for a serious illness. My knee-jerk Western reaction was that in a real crisis, I was better off going for potent drugs. The hotel clerk informed me that it was either Bajracharya or somebody appreciably less skilled.

The next day I arrived at a modest one-story faded-brown cement building off a back street where Bajracharya maintained his practice. I paid a few rupees for the rickshaw and trudged inside. I was a mess, barely sitting up, too weak to care. A kind-looking, slender man greeted me. I told him in English that I was very sick. I described drinking from the river and the diarrhea, fever, chills, and weight loss that followed. After just a moment of explanation, he asked me to lie down on a wooden examination table. There wasn't a stethoscope, tongue depressor, or thermometer in sight.

Bajracharya laid the palm of his right hand on my abdomen and closed his eyes. I relaxed on top of the table, intestines gurgling and churning. After a couple of minutes, Bajracharya withdrew his hand. "I know exactly what is wrong with you," he said.