Part 1 - Rediscovering Folk Wisdom

Dr Abe V Rotor

Old folks believe that mushroom is spawned by lightning and thunder. Too early kite flying brings poor harvest. Rub salt on the cut end of fruits like guyabano and nangka to enhance ripening. Animals are uneasy before an earthquake. People who have large ears live longer. The leaves of acacia regularly fold at 5 o’clock in the afternoon, thus serving as timepiece of rural folks. 

Lightning is Nature's quickest way of fixing Nitrogen into Nitrates, A lightning such as this converts tons and tons of Nitrates which will dissolve in rain and brought down to earth. Nitrate (-NO3) is then absorbed and used by plants in the production of organic compounds which will then be shared through the food chain with other organisms. 

Don’t plant papaya on the front yard. We can only imaging the various reactions of people from both older and present generations on these and many other beliefs and practices.

Rediscovering indigenous knowledge and folk wisdom enlarges and enhances our history and tradition. There are those that are good materials for research. Those that we cannot explain scientifically are still valuable because they are part of our culture and they contribute to the quaintness of living.

Here are 20 cases the author wrote from experience and association with old folk, having been raised on the farm and worked in various field assignments.

1. Slow lead (Pb) poisoning - the case of a sickly little boy.  Here is a case of slow lead poisoning.  There was this sickly boy of five, and the kindly old family doctor was puzzled of his condition. One fine Sunday morning the doctor happened to drop at the boy’s residence.  While having coffee  with  the  family  the  doctor  exclaimed,  “Ah,  now  I know why my young  patient is sickly!”  It was like Archimedes who got out of the bathtub shouting, “Eureka! Eureka!” (I found it, I found it) He pointed at the gold lining on the rim of his coffee cup which has faded.  It means that the user has been slowly taking in the poisonous lead in the gold paint! On inspecting the other china the doctor found the same revealing condition.

As people move from the countryside to live in cities, among the risks they encounter is lead poisoning.  Our old folks seldom suffered from this malady because they were living in a more pristine environment, and at the dawn of modern technology. 

The first case of mass lead poisoning occurred among the Romans when they changed their cups and vessels from bronze to lead. Today it is estimated that over 400,000 children in the US have an excess of lead in their systems. This cumulative poisoning affects the brain, the nervous system, the blood, and the abdominal system characterized by severe stomach cramps, nausea, vomiting, weakness and confusion combined with decreased alertness.  Lead in the bone marrow interferes with the formation of red blood cells as well as damaging existing ones leading to anemia, pallor and weakness, and to a severe extent, delirium, coma and even death.

Lead is generally used to fix many kinds of paints.  For years lead is mixed with gasoline to improve combustion and reduce engine knock.  Today the use of lead is strictly regulated all over the world. When buying paints for school use or as house paint, be sure to get one with a lead-free label. Use only unleaded gasoline. And fix that crumbling wall.  Get rid or at least minimize the intake of lead. Avoid as much as possible the following:

1. ·         Automobile exhaust fumes
2. ·         Industrial wastes and air pollutants
3. ·         Paint of toys, walls, and windowsill
4. ·         Eating food or liquor prepared in lead containers
5. ·         Prolonged job contact with lead paints, batteries, solder.
6. ·         Eating food tainted with lead passed on through the food chain. Kangkong (Ipomea aquatica) has high lead residue. The liver contains lead and other toxic metals like mercury and cadmium more than any part of the body.   

2. The case of the green and brown grasshoppers - are they of the same species, or different?

The old folks tell children these grasshoppers are one and same, and proceed to explain that the grasshopper is like the chameleon. They can change colors to mimic their environment.  It is a way of defense and offense - to escape their enemies and catch their unwary preys. Many organisms are masters of disguise.

Here are examples to illustrate this biological phenomenon.

1. Moths near industrial sites are darker than their counterparts in the countryside, mimicking the bark of trees and walls of buildings darkened by carbon dust.
2. The octopus is a master mimicker; it does not only change colors but patterns as well, sometimes assuming the likeness of other sea creatures, or a piece of coral or simply a colored landscape.
3. Nonpoisonous butterfly species resemble the poisonous species to escape predation. Examples are the nonpoisonous Viceroy butterfly (Limenitis archippus) resembles the poisonous Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus). Both are  identical that birds have learned to avoid eating both of them.   
4. The leaf-footed preying mantis is perfectly hidden among leaves; the walking stick looks like a piece of twig; the bagworm could be mistaken for a thorn.
5. The Sargassum fish is colored and shaped like the Sargassum, a red seaweeds that inhabits the lower depth of coral reefs.  They are among the dominant species of fish in the Sargasso Sea.

Let’s go back to the puzzle of the grasshopper.  In summer it is brown; during the rainy season, it is green.  As an entomologist I have observed the various coloration and patterns of the short-horned grasshopper (Oxya velox), as well as the long-horned grasshopper (Phaneroptera furcifera).  With the change of seasons, I would tell my students, just like the old folks told me when I was a kid, “They are one and same.”  

3. Old folks talk about living things resurrecting from the dead.  Is this true? 

They tell us of the magic of lizards growing new tails, crabs regaining lost claws, starfish arising from body pieces.  How can we explain these mysteries?

The biological phenomenon behind these stories is called regeneration. The male deer grows a new set of anthers each year; sea squirts and hydras are produced from tiny buds; the same way plants grow from cuttings.  New worms may regenerate from just pieces of the body; and some fish can sprout new fins to replace the ones that have been bitten off.

Experiments demonstrated that the forelimb of a salamander severed midway between the elbow and the wrist, can actually grow into a new one exactly the same as the lost parts.  The stump re-forms the missing forelimb, wrist, and digits within a few months.  In biology this is called redifferentiation, which means that the new tissues are capable of reproducing the actual structure and attendant function of the original tissues. 

Curious the kid I was, I examined a twitching piece of tail, without any trace of its owner. I was puzzled at what I saw.  My father explained how the lizard, a skink or bubuli, escaped its would-be predator by leaving its tail twitching to attract its enemy, while its tailless body stealthily went into hiding.  “It will grow a new tail,” father assured me. I have also witnessed tailless house lizards (butiki) growing back their tails at various stages, feeding on insects around a ceiling lamp. During the regeneration period these house lizards were not as agile as those with normal tails, which led me to conclude how important the tail is.

Regeneration is a survival mechanism of many organisms. Even if you have successfully subdued a live crab you might end up holding only its pinchers, and the canny creature has gone back in the water. This is true also to grasshoppers, they actually detach their legs in order to escape their enemies.

Another kind of regeneration is compensatory hypertrophy, a kind of temporary growth response that occurs in such organs as the liver and kidney when they are damaged. If a surgeon removes up to 70 percent of a diseased liver, the remaining liver tissues undergo rapid mitosis (multiplication of cells) until almost the original liver mass is restored.  Similarly, if one kidney is removed, the other enlarges greatly to compensate for its lost partner.

   

4. Nature medicine.  Can animals really heal themselves?

Old folks tell us of a number of cases animals can actually heal themselves.

• Dogs, deer, cattle, and the like, clean their wounds by licking them.  Their saliva contains natural antibiotics.  It is often that they deliberately expose their wounds to sunlight. Others like the muskrat seal its wounds with resin or gum.
• Domestic fowls and birds have the habit of preening to arrange their feathers in place, and to get rid of parasites and foreign matters. 
• Birds and animals bathe regularly, and these baths are of many varieties – water, sun (sun bath), mud (carabao and pigs), and dust (ground fouls).
• A wounded orangutan or gorilla will attempt to staunch the flow of blood with its hands, and will then close the hole with packing of astringent aromatic leaves.
• Old grizzly bears use the hot sulfur baths, which may alleviate the aches incident to age.
• A wolf bitten by rattlesnake chews snakeroot; a wild turkey during a rainy spell compels her babies to eat spicebush leaves.
• An animal with fever hunts up an airy, shady place near water and remains quiet, eating very little and drinking often.
• Female birds need lime to form eggshells, and it is a common thing to see pet birds eating cuttlebone.

When sick or wounded, wild creatures resort to the ancient remedies of nature: medicines, pure air and complete relaxation. This observation has inspired humans in the art of natural healing. To this day, barefoot doctors and spiritual healers (herbolarios) use many of the ways animals heal themselves. 

5. Is there really a white carabao? White elephant? White Rhino?

I’d like to relate a story about the mystical white carabao.

Albino tamaraw

(Internet)

Melecio (bless his soul), a long time co-worker in government told me how a white carabao got him into trouble in class. On the first day of classes his teacher in Grade 1 asked him, “What color has the carabao?”

 “White, ma’am,” he quipped for which he was punished after class even without getting a chance to explain.  The next meeting young Melecio was again asked of the same question, and the teacher got the same answer.  The teacher was infuriated. “Don’t come back to class unless you ‘produce’ your father,” roared the teacher, his voice reverberating on the flimsy bamboo walls of the village school. 

Melecio’s father explained to the teacher, “You see ma’am, Melecio has a white carabao he pastures everyday,” his father explained. The teacher did not know her biology, much less in treating a child with kindness.

We call animals that lack pigments albino, a genetic “fault” among animals like the carabao, rhino, and elephant. There are also albino moose, boa constrictor, mouse and many more in the animal kingdom. In fact this condition also affects man. I had a classmate in the elementary nicknamed White. He also had an albino sister, although both their parents are normal typical Filipinos. Albino humans are often mistaken to belong to the Caucasoid or white race, sometimes igniting debates on their parentage.

“Nature commits mistake, too.”  That’s how my genetics professor in college, Dr. Nemesio Mendiola, the country’s foremost geneticist, explained. “The genes that govern dark skin pigment (melanin) are dominant.  Nature saw to it that they are regularly included in the combination of gametes from the parents. But there are instances that these dominant genes fail to transcend from any of the parents so that it is the recessive albino gene that is expressed in the offspring, resulting to a pigmentless condition.  This renders the individual susceptible to the deleterious effects of heat and radiation.  In fact, an albino has difficulty seeing under bright light because the retina also lacks pigment that serves as natural shade.  Darwinian law of natural selection can explain the rarity of albinos in the animal world. Albinos have little chance to survive and reach maturity, which is nature’s way of correcting its own mistake.”

It is only through man’s intervention that albinos are given a chance to survive, giving them a place in his beliefs and culture. In fact, albino elephants are revered in India and Thailand.  In Greek mythology, King Minos was given a white bull by the gods, and for not following the gods’ wishes to have the beast sacrificed, he was punished by siring a son that is half-man and half-bull, called the Minotaur.

A figure of speech was developed with the term, white elephant. For example, an infrastructure that is idle is metaphorically called white elephant.     

            

6.  If you are hurt by sea urchin, immediately apply urine on the wound. 

In the absence of vinegar, calamansi, or lemon, urine is the last resort to relieve pain when you encounter a sea urchin (maritangtang, Ilk).  Sea urchins are found in shallow coral reefs and among sea grass.  The spines are so sharp, they get imbedded in the skin.  The remedy is to dissolve the spike by applying any acidic substance on the wound. The principle is that the acid reacts with calcium, neutralizing into salt. The blood then takes care in eliminating the salt from the wound and ultimately from the body, thus operation is seldom  needed.     

7.  Roosters are Nature’s wake up call. 

Notice that roosters crow almost at the same time as dawn approaches. Some crow at midnight though. They are fairly accurate in telling time, but at the height of Mt.Pinatubo’s eruption in 1991, roosters in Australia and China  behaved differently. Pyroclastic materials (volcanic ash) drifted into the atmosphere, blocking the sun and temporarily taking away the sense of time from these fowls. It was not unusual then to hear them crow at anytime of the day or night until the drift settled months after the eruption.

With our changing lifestyle, this natural rouser is likewise changing, especially the gamecock.  But on the farm where I live, the roosters still crow with a message –

 “Early to bed and early to rise,   

  Makes a person healthy and wise.”

8. If you accidentally touched a hot object, immediately press your affected fingers on your ear lobes.

By so doing you diffuse the heat from your fingers and get refreshed. The earlobe is usually cooler than any part of the body, so with the whole ear which works on the principle of a radiator. That’s why people who flare up develop red ears. (Pulang pula ang tainga). It is the same way the rabbit and the elephant release heat through their large ears. The earlobe is also less sensitive because it has very few nerves and blood vessels – which explains the universal practice of earlobe piercing and wearing of earrings.

9.  Control common insect pests with red pepper (siling labuyo).

These are the ways old folks make use of red pepper or siling labuyo (Capsicum frutescens) in controlling destructive insects.

·         To protect mungbeans from bean weevil (Callosobruchus maculatus), thoroughly dry some 8 to 10 ripe labuyo and place them in a tea bag.  Place the bag inside the glass jar or plastic container in which mungbean is stored.  Cover hermetically. Effective protection against the pest is from three to six months.  Just be sure the mungbean is well dried (14 percent moisture) before storage.     

·         When spraying garden plants, crush 5 to 10 pieces of ripe labuyo in one gallon of water (5 liters), and apply the solution with sprinkler like watering the plants.  Repeat every week until there are no signs of insects and other pests in your garden. You may add a pinch of powder soap, preferably natural soap (Perla) Note: Don’t apply on tomato, eggplant, potato, tobacco - and pepper itself.  These plants belong to the same family – Solanaceae – and may become infected by the mosaic virus the labuyo may be carrying.  Use it instead on other plants.

10.  Carabao’s milk is more nutritious than cow’s milk.

True.  The milk of carabao or water buffalo milk is richer than dairy cow’s milk. It is richer in all major nutrients and has higher amount of solids, which is important in creaming.  Philippine carabao's milk has the following nutrients and elements in percentage.

·      Fat  9.65  fat (4.5 higher than Jersey's cow's milk),

·      Protein 5.26,

·      Casein 4.24,

·      Lactose 5.29,

·      Total solids 20.36,

·      Chloride 0.083,

·      Calcium 0.216, and

·      Phosphorus 0.177. 

Buffaloes have a longer lactation period, and a greater percentage of milk produced (over 2,700 kg. per lactation and higher fat content).  Besides, they have much longer productive life.  However, buffaloes have longer dry period, longer gestation, an older age at first calving, and a longer calving interval, which, among other factors, make raisers prefer dairy cattle over buffaloes.

Philippine carabaos, produce the highest fat and total solids content than any domesticated buffaloes. Local soft white cheese is made from carabao’s milk following either the traditional method that produces inferior cheese with low quality, or the improved method which UPLB developed.  With the latter process, yield is tremendously increased and the keeping quality improved to keep the cheese longer.