We talked the whole evening, and by the time Mukhitdin showed up, the pilaf was ready.
After dinner, the doctor called me to the kitchen, "We’re going to make the medicine for Mama now." He showed me a lump of some substance that looked like either dark-colored wax or modeling clay. It was propolis, the most powerful natural antibiotic. Mukhitdin picked up a tea bowl, chopped some of the propolis with a knife, put a small piece of butter on it, dumped the whole thing into a frying pan and put it on the stove.
"Butter increases the effect of propolis 15-fold," he explained. "It will be a great help to Mama’s lungs."
In a few minutes, the steamy brown concoction was poured back into the tea bowl.
"It will solidify soon. Give Mama a teaspoon three times a day. When you run out, make some more." He placed a piece of propolis on the table. "She needs to rest and take the medication. Here’s a new herbal formula, as well. In the evening, I’ll stop by to examine her."
We decided that the next morning I would attend Mukhitdin’s classes at the Center, and then our guests – if one could call them guests – left.
The next evening bought us unexpected joy. After feeling Mama’s pulse, the doctor smiled almost his old smile.
"You feel better, Esya-apa," he exclaimed. "I know you feel better. What great medications I’ve given you!" And he raised his index finger solemnly.
Mukhitdin was usually very reserved and never bragged. Only true joy could make him talk like that.
"How… Do you really… Do you really notice the difference?" I asked, happy but afraid to believe it.
Mukhitdin nodded.
"If a choice of treatment is correct, it’s possible to see the improvement after three doses of herbs. The vibration of the pulse changes." He patted me on the hand. "Thank God, it’s already a bit better."
Mama shrugged her shoulders. "I know everything’s all right with me. When will you begin to treat Valera?"
Chapter 15. Ustoz
I woke up as it was just getting light. I needed to fix Mama’s breakfast and brew the herbs before leaving for the Center.
The weather was blustery. I could hear the wind wailing and beating against the panes as I stood at the window. But the sun was rising in a clear sky. The crimson semicircle flared on the horizon, climbing higher each moment until becoming a golden ball. Cars began darting down city streets. Somewhere out there, beyond the city limits, I could distinguish tractors moving slowly across fields beneath the morning fog. There were thick clouds of smoke over each of them. The tractors were old, with diesel engines and chimneys on their hoods.
Mama was still asleep when I set the table and left for the Center. I should mention that the Center, or, to be precise the building that had housed the Center, wasn’t there any longer. The building had been taken apart, brick by brick. Those bricks, thousands of them, arranged in neat stacks, were there in the courtyard where a new building was under construction. Patients were received, and classes were held in the temporary annex. That annex wasn’t large or comfortable enough, but it was in the same courtyard.
I wasn’t surprised to hear the word “construction” from students before the lesson began. But when Timur, the doctor’s student whom I knew well and with whom I hadn't been able to finish a conversation before the lesson began, said, “All right, we can finish our conversation at the construction site,” I was surprised, or rather I didn’t understand. I was planning to visit the construction site with the doctor, not with Timur. What did it have to do with him?
The lesson began at 7:30 a.m. About 15 people were seated around three tables. Pages of books and notebooks began to rustle, as in any school class, but I didn’t see a blackboard, and the students were adults, many of whom had significant life experience behind them.
There was Makhmoudjon, a former surgeon. He had already been studying Eastern medicine for five years. It would be another five years before he finished studies here. Perhaps after that he would open his own clinic. So far, Makhmoudjon’s family, his wife and four children, who lived hundreds of kilometers away, were waiting patiently for their husband and father to return home.
Ikramdjou Usmanov, with whom he shared a desk, was fifty years old and had been a biologist when he was young. About 15 years before, he had fallen gravely ill and became Mukhitdin’s patient. After he was cured, he became his student… his first student, by the way. Now, as he continued to study, he also received patients.
The first sound I heard during the lesson was the melodious clinking of tea bowls. Seated at his desk in front of the students, the smiling tabib was, as usual, pouring fragrant tea into bowls. In that way, while drinking tea, they began an unhurried conversation about a subject they had previously begun to discuss – black bile, savdo, in the view of Eastern and contemporary medicine.
Since I was the least prepared of those who took part in the discussion, it was difficult for me to evaluate it. I can only write about my impressions. It was extremely interesting, and I understood how important the subject of the discussion was, in general, and for me in particular. The subject was essentially the way in which Eastern medicine viewed the origin of a cancer cell.
Here I must interrupt my story about the lesson to return to the views of Ibn Sina and other medical scholars of his school.
Any live cell has four functions: it can capture, retain, absorb and expel. A cell can perform these functions thanks to the humors, the same four humors that together form mature blood. Humors, Eastern medicine asserts, are created in a human organism from consumed food. After the preliminary digestion of food, it turns into hilus, a liquid substance, which is as soft and white as a thick barley decoction. Hilus flows through the mesenteric veins and then through the portal vein to the liver, and there, due to the different temperatures of the various cells of the liver, hilus is gradually and consistently transformed into four humors – the four integral parts of mature blood. Phlegm is formed from the liquid part, which, as it matures, forms blood that is not yet ripe. The thick part of hilus forms natural safro (yellow bile), which, as it partially matures, forms natural savdo (black bile).
As the four humors are formed, the liver unites, or captures, them to form mature blood.
In other words, it is the liver, according to Eastern medicine, that is the blood-creating organ. It’s clear that a liver can only produce good, healthy humors and create blood if it is healthy itself. Otherwise pathological changes in the humors occur. There can be many of them, and each can become a source of different diseases.
I would like to emphasize once again that contemporary medicine does not recognize the blood-forming role of the liver or the notion of humors. The sedimentary part of blood – leukocytes and erythrocytes – is produced in the bone marrow. Their deviation from the norm is viewed not as a cause but a symptom of a disease itself. It’s true that the symptoms, in other words, serious changes in the blood composition can, in turn, lead to more diseases.
Now I’ll get back to the cells with which I began my attempts at explaining, dear readers. Eastern medicine asserts that each humor is responsible for a certain cell function. For example, safro, yellow bile or blood plasma is responsible for the function of capturing, and black bile for the function of expelling. These functions are as important for a cell as for any other organism. (A cell is also an organism with its own heart, liver, kidneys, etc.) So, any working organism produces waste, which must absolutely be removed. Waste is removed from a human organism as urine, excrement, and sweat. The growth of hair and nails is also a means of removing waste. When this process is corrupted for some reason, poisoning occurs. Sometimes it’s so strong that it may lead to an organism's demise, to death.