PARAGUAY: Doctor

A dirty-grey-bearded Paraguayan with sly eyes and a derby hat said last week that if his Government would help instead of badgering him, he would annihilate tuberculosis which is a scourge of Paraguay.

Thousands of other Paraguayans believed this man, whom they call Tupá Mbaé (“Sent By God”). The most famous herb doctor of southern Paraguay, his reputation as a curandero rivals that of Mariano Miguel Campos, who wields his herbs at Yhu in the northwest forests.

Around southern Paraguay it is said that Tupá Mbaé cures gall stones with apeterebi, dysentery with anambai-guazú, internal hemorrhage with guabiyu-miru, hemophilia with caa pari miri, boils with ananga piri, syphilis with the poisonous milk of curupi-cay, many other afflictions with other local flora. Thousands of his patients have, beyond doubt, got well. Many orthodox physicians think that Tupá Mbaé has had something to do with it. The forests of southern Paraguay contain a rich pharmacopaeia which would bear looking into.

Tupá Mbaé, whose real name is Ezequiel Rosas, first studied medicine with his father, a healer of the Caingua Indians. When Tupá Mbaé began working on an Argentine plantation other workers trickled, then streamed, to him for cures. As the years passed, more and more upper-class sick appeared. Among the poor people’s gifts of fruit and wood, Tupá Mbaé began to find one, five and ten peso notes. One day he got the idea that he could live by medicine alone. Near Oberá, Argentina, he built up a practice of 10,000 patients.

A year ago the local doctors had Tupá Mbaé jailed in Posadas for practicing without a license. This made Tupá Mbaé a martyr and hundreds made pilgrimages to see him behind the bars. Presently a sharper bailed Tupá Mbaé out of jail, began to exploit him. The medical profession finally forced Tupá Mbaé across the border into his native Paraguay, but there he found willing protectors.

Meanwhile Tupá Mbaé had greatly extended his therapy. No longer did he need to see patients in person. He prescribed for the distant sick by listening to a description of their symptoms, then smelling and tasting shirts, brassières, girdles or any other apparel that had been in contact with the afflicted anatomy. Once Tupá Mbaé investigated a man’s sock and correctly diagnosed hookworm, only to learn that the patient was not worried about his hookworm but about his undetected tuberculosis.

Last week patients kept traveling to the little town of Ibicui where the doctor was living in a shack, maintaining his calm bedside manner among his several wives and dozens of children, including two albinos. The doctor’s latest protector was the local police commissioner. He had provided Tupá Mbaé with a dispensary which was also the police commissioner’s home, police station and customs post.