Western medicine meets shamans

Bryce Rogow '02 spent almost a month in small villages in Peru this summer as part of a medical expedition with a group of doctors. An emergency medical technician with the Princeton First Aid and Rescue Squad, Rogow helped treat sick and injured residents of Iquipos, in the Peruvian Amazon. The project was called the Rain Forest Health Project. He recently spoke with 'Prince' Executive Editor Michael Koike.

'Prince': What was the purpose of the trip?

Rogow: We lived in the jungle about 110 miles from the nearest city on a tributary on the Amazon. We took canoe trips and hiking trips to villages that requested our aid. Our main goal was to help the people that needed it . . . Another goal of the trip was to work with the shamans, who use potions and things like that to cure people. A lot of villagers have lost their faith and the missionaries and the government have urged this. They have been urging Western medicine, but because they don't really have access to the Western medicine, we tried to help. But we worked with the shamans . . . It's really legitimate cures, plants and things like that. We try to use their techniques. That's the most viable way of health care they have for themselves.

P: How did you get involved?

R: I had an interest in this type of thing for a while since I'm an EMT, and I'm also an anthropology major. I really enjoyed the culture I saw there. I actually found the organization over the Internet . . . The lifestyle was interesting also. We ate a lot of our food from the forest, bananas and plants . . . They speak a dialect, but they also all speak Spanish. My Spanish is almost fluent, so we could communicate fairly easily.

P: Is this what you want to do after graduation?

R: [I haven't decided yet about] medical school. But I might want to get involved, possibly going to a Third World country. We treated everything from piranha bites to sting ray wounds, axe cuts, leprosy, every kind of fungus you can imagine. One guy got stung by a sting ray. He jumped into maybe an inch of water. And he was wearing thick rubber boots, and the sting ray went right through them. We had to evacuate him from the village. We took him out on the canoe to the base camp. None of the doctors down there had ever treated it before, and they weren't really sure what to do with it. I have done a lot of studies in wilderness medicine on my own, and so I knew that the best way to treat it was to immerse it in hot water. [Getting stung] is incredible pain, and it starts to paralyze your leg a bit. He was starting to throw up from the pain and pass out. Morphine didn't do anything, but the hot water really took away a lot of the pain. So I was pretty proud of myself for that.

P: What did the experience teach you?

R: I gained a lot. The experience of helping people is always very fulfilling. And the situation was very challenging since it was hot and humid, and we didn't have many supplies. It added an entirely new dimension to the medical profession. I always really wanted to visit there, and the experience gave me an inside look at the Indians because they were very receptive and thankful for what we were doing. We were invited to participate in many of their activities.

P: What was one of the activities that you yourself took part in?

R: Well, there was one really interesting thing that I almost did. The shamans, they use a potion called Ayahuasca. It's made by boiling two jungle vines together for 12 hours until you get a syrup. Then they drink this, and it's hallucinogenic. It basically puts you in an instant trance. You can start vomiting, but the trance lasts for at least a few hours and can last up to three days. The shamans use this position to communicate with the spirits to help cure the patient. I became friends with one of the shamans, and he invited me to take it. I was excited to do it, but he was called away on an emergency exorcism, and so he had to leave.

P: What was your most interesting experience?

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R: One of the things people eat is called palm grub, grub that live in palm trees. It's basically like a three-inch long slimy writhing maggot, with pinchers on one end. In one village, we found women carrying a basket, and the leaders of the group bought about a dozen and they were going to take it back to the camp to cook it. I ate one raw. I tried to swallow it whole, but it crawled back up my throat. So I had to bite it into two and swallow the two halves. The other Americans wouldn't have done this. But the natives, they had never heard of a white person doing that before. The Indians accepted me, and I got along with them really well after that.

P: What was your most memorable experience?

R: We treated about 1,000 patients in all. But I would say the most memorable part was one day when we finished our treatments early. For the rest of the day, I just played soccer with all the villagers. We played as just friends, just a long game of soccer, and then they would show me their pets and monkeys, and I would tell them about the States. It was a bonding experience, in just this small village behind this really dense jungle.