Today I saw a girl getting her back scraped by a man on a bed on the sidewalk. It is called coin scraping or Kos Khyal in Khmer and it is a very common treatment when you have a cold, fever or back pain here in Cambodia. It is believed to originate from China where it is called Gua Sha. They first put oil or tiger balm on the skin and then they scrape the skin with a spoon, a coin or an instrument made from buffalo horn or wood. The scraping normally leaves marks on the skin that can look like you have been beaten.
The first
time I saw one of my Cambodian colleagues with these marks I thought he had
been in fight, until he told me that his wife had treated him the night before
because he was starting to get a fever. When he told me about the method I was
very skeptical, why would something that you almost can describe as abuse help
when you are getting sick? Since then I have read a lot about it and the next
time I get a fever in Phnom Penh I will try it myself to see if it really
works.
No, it doesn't work. If anything, by doing that you're running the risk of tearing the skin and causing an infection. There is no sound logical or rational basis for believing that this could help anyone with an illness. It doesn't make sense from a biological standpoint whatsoever.
ReplyDeleteI know the urge to understand and respect Khmer culture is strong when you're immersed in it, and in most cases that's the right impulse, but certain practices here - particularly "medical" treatments - are totally counterproductive and they should be discouraged at every opportunity.
If the same Cambodian colleague then told you that he/she had eaten the dried or powdered remains of an endangered animal, how would you respond? That's something the rich sometimes resort to, and it's just as ridiculous. Or how about sleeping with virgins (buying them) for its purported benefits? Coin scraping - self abuse, essentially - isn't as pernicious as those practices, but it's the same backwards thinking that will keep Cambodia a nation of rice farmers who can't grow rice as well as they did a 1000 years in the Angkor period.
Don't coddle them, don't indulge their superstitions, don't let them drag you backwards out of the 21st Century. They need to catch up with modernity, lives are depending on it here every single day.
Just ran across this...seems like a modern adaption of the Chinese Gua Sha, which is also scraping. It's used to "release external pathogens" in traditional Chinese medicine, which means in layman's terms roughly to get out the germies quickly while they are not too established in the body. There is not as much research on this as there is on practices like acupuncture, herbs, cupping, etc.
ReplyDeleteSome websites I found:
http://www.doctoroz.com/blog/jamie-starkey-lac/scrape-away-pain-gua-sha
http://www.rolfer.com.au/how-does-gua-sha-work.php
http://www.guasha.com/faqs.html
etc
I'm a little disturbed at what the previous poster is insinuating because he/she seems to have absolutely no knowledge of the practice at all and is very pro-Western/anti-traditional. Who are we to disrespect tradition, lest of all, if it is natural and works? Anyway, do your own research.