In India’s remote and poverty-stricken areas, there is a shortage of healthcare facilities and qualified doctors. Even today, many people seek treatment from faith healers, who sometimes present strange theories about how the human body functions.
Shyamali Singh is a high school student from the Medinipur district of West Bengal, about whom people believe that he possesses a hereditary ability to cure dog bites.
He claims that as a result of a dog bite, puppies begin to grow inside the human body, after which the person starts behaving like a rabid dog.
Among the local population, the belief that dog bites cause puppies to grow inside the body has a very long history.
Psychiatrist Kanti Ghosh wrote an article in a medical journal in 2003 about the medical theories of quack healers. He says his interest in the subject developed when a nine-year-old boy came to his clinic ten days after being bitten by a pet dog.
He says the boy showed no signs of rabies, but firmly believed that a puppy had developed in his stomach. According to the boy’s parents, he would sometimes start barking like a dog and walking on all fours.
Similarly, a farmer named Gopal Singh also came to his clinic, who had been bitten by a dog seven years earlier.
He said that he immediately went to a spiritual healer, who told him that a puppy could develop in his stomach, after which he would go mad like a dog and die.
Dr. Sanjay Samoi is also troubled by similar beliefs held by villagers who come to his clinic. He says people are ignorant and still believe in such superstitions. “I tell everyone that this is not possible,” he says.
Doctors say it may take many years to remove these superstitions from people’s minds.