FIJIAN FIRE-WALKING

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22350, 22 February 1936, Page 10

FIJIAN FIRE-WALKING

recent demonstration INTEREST OF SCIENTISTS EXPLANATIONS OFFERED J The ceremony' of fire-walking in Fiji is described in the current issue of the British Medical Journal by Professor David Waterston, of St. Andrew's University, and Sir James Purves-Stewart, who offer divergent explanations of the Fijians' ability to "walk with bare feet upon stones heated to a temperature sufficiently high to ignito ordinary paper." The ceremony was performed at Suva on August 29 last year for the benefit of members of the British Medical Association on their way to the association's conference at Melbourne. The explanation offered by Professor Waterston is that "by training and practice, and by the repeated exposure of the soles to heat. Ihe performers are able to endure, without severe pain, a temperature which to an untrained person i 3 intolerable." He points out, in support of this view, that "children who discard shoes and stockings, after being accustomed to wear them, cannot at first bear to walk over sharp gravel owing to the pain which it causes, but aftpr a few days' practice they can do so with impunity. ... It would appear that there is a blunting of sensibility or, more precisely, that the threshold to pain has been raised. Hypnotic Suggestion " A person accustomed to immerse the hands in very hot liquids comes in time to be able to plunge them, without severe pain or any ill effects, into fluids of a temperature intolerable to others, and also to handle unusually hot objects." Sir James Purves-Stewart, on the other hand, considers that "the phenomena of transient therm-anaesthesia of the soles are due mainly to suggestion. either auto-suggestion by the performers themselves or hetero-sugeestion by their native chief or priest or some other authority." In support of this view, he mentions the " temporary duration of the indifference to intense heat;" the fire-walkers were able to feel pin-pricks, and the end of a burning cigarette, immediately before and ako immediately after the ordeal. While able to waik on the stones, they could not touch them with their hands. He also attaches importance to the " preliminary religious ritual in the prayertent, whereby a degree of hypnotic suggestion is readily attainable." Religious Element He concludes: — " Finally, I would call attentipn to the religious element in the ritual, indicating that this was not'an habitual or trivial or daily performance, but an infrequent and specially prepared celebration. Heligious ectasy (as in the long procession of saints and martyrs of various creeds, from the days of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace down to St. Joan of Arc. burned at the stake at Rouen in 1431, and many other instances, all probably the result of auto-suggestion) is capable of temporarily suppressing sensations of pain. Such interruption or suppression of sensibility is a.cortical affair, whereby the individual for the time succeeds in inhibiting and ignoring painful stimuli arising at the perphery." _ . Both writers reject the theories that the soles of the feet may have been " abnormally tough, hard, or thick," or that any protective Substance may have been applied to the feet, or opiate.drug taken. f Demonstration Described The ceremony is described as follows: — The two men, with some seven or eight of their comrades, retired into a small hut of palm leaves to prepare themselves for the "fire-walking. W*did not enter the hut, but one of us was told by the chief that the ceremony consisted in prayers to a "small devil" who was invisible. During this part of the ritual, which lasted several minutes, the hot stones were being carefully examined by the others to verify their steadiness. Several scraps of paper were thrown into crevices between the central stones, where the heat was sufficient to cause the paper to burst into flames almost immediately. The native assistants round the pit then began to chant sones and cries, which became progressively louder and louder. The performers now made their appearance, running from the prayer hut over the damr to tbe P !t - . . • , ct They walked across it in single, nie, stepping on the heated stones. The duration of contact of their feet with the stones was that of an average footstep —about a second—and their walk was not appreciably hurried. One of \he larger stones, still very hot, was extracted from the pit and rolled along the ground toward us, a distance of three or four yards. The men and ourselves all sat down beside it. We asked them to put their hands on the stone, but they, like ourselves, could not- give -it more than a momentary touch. When asked to put their feet on it they Hlid so. but only for a second or so. The chief himself, however, who was supervising lis, placed the sole of his foot on the hot stone and held it there with placidity for several seconds. Some amusement was caused by the two performers, who slyly turned the stone over so as to induce us to touch a portion of its surface which had been fractured and which was apparently rougher and hotter than the smooth surface on which they had walked. We found that this surface was so hot that we could touch it only momentarily with our finger-tips. The soles of our feet also could only touch it for a very short time, perhaps a second, when the pitp oroinpt retraction of the foot, followed by, eryptnema but no blistering.