Magical Bark Dispensed in Dusty Thai Village : Dr. Noi Pushes Career as Healer--at 3

Last weekend, as the crowds got out of hand, police set up roadblocks to isolate the dusty, up-country village of Wang Rongnoi. They put up posters advising arrivals: “Dr. Noi Is Hibernating.”

In fact, the doctor was not hibernating--in Thai usage, a mix of fast and meditation. That was a police trick. Then again, Dr. Noi is not a doctor, really. He’s only 3 years old.

Sometimes he behaves like a doctor. He keeps a few thousand patients waiting. And despite his reputation as a healer, the little doctor occasionally sneaks a cigarette, according to Bangkok reporters who have visited the family home.

Thai authorities and the Bangkok press have made up their minds on the “powers” of the 3-year-old doctor. Newspaper headlines identify him as the “Boy Quack,” and police have ordered the boy and his father to close up their practice or face legal action.

Con Games Common

Countryside con games are as regular as rain in Thailand, many of them rooted in lingering animistic beliefs. Some are weird, such as the case last year of a woman who reputedly laid a hen’s egg. Having proven her miraculous abilities, she was sought out as the source of recommended numbers in the national lottery.

Dr. Noi began his career as a healer about four months ago. His mother fell ill and the boy and his father, a landless farmer, set out to find a cure. The little doctor, it is said, pointed to a tree and the father removed the bark, boiled it in water and gave the brew to his ailing wife, who promptly recovered.

As in any small town, word got around quickly in Wang Rongnoi. Soon ailing villagers from miles around were coming by Dr. Noi’s place for the magical bark and, by chance or otherwise, some were cured.

By last week Dr. Noi’s practice had become a carnival, literally. A small Ferris wheel appeared in his village to amuse the faithful, for a price. Entrepreneurs rented village land for food stalls and parking lots. Thousands of cars were driven to the village, some from Bangkok 140 miles away, and each parking space reportedly went for 40 cents.

Money Rolls In

On Monday, the father, Charoen Cherdchu, said his bank account held only about $125, but visitors to the village over the weekend insisted that security trucks from three different banks made pickups, and one policeman estimated the daily take at about $750--equal to the country’s annual per capita income.

There seemed no dispute about the basic medical fee. Each applicant paid 40 cents for a plastic bowl containing a candle, incense sticks and two cigarettes, which was offered to Dr. Noi along with a four-cent coin.

Then, when Dr. Noi could be lured from his toys, he was hoisted on the shoulders of one of his “assistants” and walked among the crowd as the tree bark was dispensed.

Bark Has No Bite

Public health officials said the bark had no medicinal properties, not even as a traditional herbal medicine. The police said the father was deceiving the public, but there were no complainants. In fact the affair might not have come to official notice if Dr. Noi’s practice had not expanded to the point where his assistants were taking chain saws to trees along the national highway in search of the wonder bark.

Under police pressure, the crowd in the little doctor’s open-air waiting room had dwindled to about 100 by the first of the week, but his father insisted that the practice would continue, that no laws were being broken. A few officials noted that the phenomenon was an implied indictment of limited government health care in northeast Thailand, the site of the village.

What Prasit Cherdchu, alias Dr. Noi, thought of his predicament was unknown. And even his believers realized that when the healing spirit was not within him, he was just a 3-year-old boy.