COLUMN ONE : A Dose of Their Own Medicine : The Russian approach to treating illnesses includes a healthy respect for home remedies. Time-honored family recipes often carry more weight than a physician’s advice.
Crouching on all fours, Mikhail Kovalchuk, a 42-year-old businessman, craned his head forward, tensed his neck muscles, stuck out his tongue and exhaled with a violent hissing sound. Then he gingerly turned around to ensure that Jane DeRosa, his American boarder, was following suit.
As DeRosa tried to smother her laughter, her Russian host-father solemnly explained that assuming this “lion position” several times a day and snacking on cranberries and honey would cure her laryngitis.
In deference to her host family’s notions about health, DeRosa, co-founder of an English-language school here, had already once slept with cloves of garlic in her nostrils to cure a cold. She had declined, however, to participate in the family’s ritual dunking every morning in ice-cold baths that are supposed to ensure general good health.
And despite Kovalchuk’s insistence that it would heal her, the “lion position” proved entirely too strange for her to mimic, said DeRosa, 28, of San Gabriel, Calif.
As hundreds of Westerners living here have discovered, Russians regard home remedies--from yoga to herbal brews to hot plasters--as a vital part of health care. Often, the non-traditional approaches are borrowed from other cultures: herbal medicines from Japan, massage therapy from China, prolonged rests in sanitariums from Europe.
Cupping, a widespread remedy for chest colds that involves creating a vacuum in a cup and then pressing it against the skin, was a traditional Ottoman Empire practice centuries ago.
And just as every nation produces its own folk remedies--Americans have endless theories about how to cure hiccups--Russia has generated some unique approaches to healing and disease prevention. Often, these measures carry as much--or more--weight than a physician’s advice.
“Our children don’t know what pills and medicine are,” Kovalchuk’s wife, Vera, said as her four sons romped on a jungle gym in their bedroom.
Flexing his powerful chest muscles, Mikhail Kovalchuk said: “We have avoided doctors all our lives. Everything should be in the hands of ordinary people--we can cure ourselves.”
The reliance on non-traditional health measures stems, at least in part, from widespread distrust of the Soviet medical system. Medicine here has long been a woman’s profession, and physicians, who earn less than bus drivers, are not well respected.
Further, shortages of everything from disposable syringes to anesthetics have plagued clinics for years. And now that central planning has crumbled along with the Soviet state, the International Federation of the Red Cross estimates that hospitals receive only 20% to 30% of the supplies they used to get.
“Our system produced a lot of doctors, but their training was bad,” said Igor Nekyulov, managing editor of Zdorovye (Health) magazine, explaining the allure of non-traditional medicine. “Similarly, the government built many hospitals, but the quality was poor. People would go from doctor to doctor, but they didn’t get any help or any good medicine.”
Thus, when she noticed some bumps on her eyelid, Svetlana Rips, 15, invented her own remedy rather than go to a doctor. Pressing a warm hard-boiled egg on her skin, then splashing on strong tea seemed to chase the rash away within days, Rips said, adding with conviction that no clinic could have helped her as quickly.
Bathing scratches and scrapes in urine is another time-honored Rips family treatment, she added. And to cure a cough, she boils a potato, slices it open and breathes in the rising steam.
“The Russians are very creative when it comes to health care,” said Dr. Myles Druckman, chief physician at the American Medical Center in central Moscow. “They seek in many ways to deal with illnesses, and a lot of their methods are not harmful. Some may even be beneficial from a psychological point of view, as the patient gains control of the situation by coming up with these cures.”
Alexander Krotov, 33, a teacher at St. Petersburg’s Pedagogical Institute, knows how to take control when he catches a cold in the windy, chilly northern city.
When he feels himself beginning to sneeze, he fills a pair of wool socks with dry mustard and wears them to bed. If his throat feels raspy, he drinks warm tea with milk and butter. If he starts to cough, he eats a radish-like vegetable marinated in honey.
His favorite remedy, however, is reserved for a fever. When his temperature is high, Krotov splashes a solution of warm water and vinegar over his entire body, then downs a shot of vodka at bedtime.
Although American doctors dismiss as nonsense many longstanding Russian ideas about health, some physicians here still promote these superstitions, and believers from wizened grandmothers to westward-looking teen-agers adhere to them.
Convinced that sitting on the ground or on stone steps causes sterility and arthritis, Russian women sometimes sunbathe standing up. They often teach their children to crouch on their heels rather than flop down on the earth.
Babushki, the feisty grandmothers who consider themselves the guardians of the nation’s health and morals, roundly reprimand any woman they see sitting on a cold floor or even a sun-warmed concrete bench.
“You never want to listen to them when they tell you not to sit on cold stone or not to leave the house without a hat, but unfortunately, they usually turn out to be right,” Janna Solomonova, a fifth-year student at Moscow State University, commented ruefully.
And though she chafes under the scoldings, Solomonova herself believes in several babushki- promoted theories. She swears that drinking cold beverages makes you sick and adding tap water to hot tea is plain dangerous. Indeed, a paranoid fear of cold is a hallmark of Russian life--the Kovalchuks’ morning baths notwithstanding.
Babushki routinely corner teen-agers on the street to scold them for not wearing hats. More aggressive grandmothers sometimes take matters into their own hands, personally zipping up strangers’ jackets or tucking in fly-away scarfs. And Russians often regard drafts--or even fresh air--with great suspicion.
“You ride in buses that have all the ventilation of a taped-up shoe box, and yet if you try to open the window, everyone looks at you funny,” said Bradley Peniston, 23, a free-lance graphic designer from St. Louis who now lives in Moscow.
Dr. Gennady Sayenko, a Russian physician who has worked for the World Health Organization, says he thinks his country’s babushki are usually on the mark, even if Western scientists cannot prove why.
“The old people don’t understand the medical reasons behind their advice, but they know what’s good for people through observation,” said Sayenko, who believes doctors should embrace non-traditional methods of healing.
This reliance on remedies based on personal experience rather than scientific experiment is characteristic of Russia’s official medical system as well as those self-appointed street doctors, said Dr. Paul Grundy, the American Embassy physician.
“When you go to a given locality, you’ll find that they’ve decided some specific treatment--often screwy to our point of view--works, and so they stick with it,” Grundy said. “There’s no universal standard of treatment for a given disease. So if you have a cold in Kiev, you might be treated by having your blood run through tubes and exposed to ultraviolet light, whereas in Moscow, you might have tubes run up your nose to flush everything out.”
American visitors often find this hodgepodge bewildering.
“Everybody has a different rule, and they’re all equally avid about it,” said DeRosa, who has lived with a Russian family for 10 months while founding Moscow’s Serendipity School. “Complete strangers often come up to you and very fervently tell you what you should be doing.”
