A Near Death from Voodoo Hexing

By CLIFTON K MEADOR, MD   In the spring of 1938, Dr. Drayton Doherty admitted a sixty-year-old African –American man to the hospital. The small hospital was located at the edge of town in an old house that had been converted into a fifteen-bed hospital. Six of the beds were located upstairs at the rear of the house in what previously served as a sleeping porch. The patient was admitted to that porch. Dr. Doherty went on to tell me that the patient, Vance Vanders, had been ill for many weeks and had lost over fifty pounds. He looked extremely wasted and near death. His eyes were sunken and resigned to death. The clinical suspicions in those days for anyone with a wasting disease were either tuberculosis or widespread cancer. Repeated tests and chest x-rays for both of these diseases were negative, as was the physical examination. Despite a nasogastric feeding tube, Vanders continued on a downhill course, refusing to eat and vomiting whatever was put down the tube. He said repeatedly he was going to die, and he soon reached a stage of near stupor. Coming in and out of consciousness, he was barely strong enough to talk. Only then did his wife, who had stayed by his bedside, ask to talk to Dr. Doherty privately. Dr. Doherty knew both the man and the wife personally. Both worked on the farm of an acquaintance of Dr. Doherty. (This farmer, when I interviewed him later, verified the story of Vanders to me.) The sick man’s wife appeared extremely nervous and anxious. She ma...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: THCB Source Type: blogs