A woman in northern Thai Nguyen province who claims to be a healer is drawing as many as 600 patients to her doorstep everyday with some pretty unorthodox techniques.
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Forty-three-year-old Pham Thi Phu, once a fish vendor in the local market, has been curing patients for a decade, reports Thanh Nien, despite having no medical training.
Rumor has it that Phu can cure everything from cancer to polio, mental illness to autism. On the brick floor of her large house, hundreds of patients lie facedown, exposing their bare behinds as Phu walks barefoot down a row of bums. According to the healer herself, Phu can transmit electricity through her feet and into the patients, ridding them of their ailments.
For more serious cases, Phu's patients are held upside down and dipped head-first into a bucket of water that's been “electrified” by Phu. The afflicted is then carried around in what appears to be a grown-up game of Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board.
While Phu has managed to attract plenty of believers, they all come from out of town. According to a neighbor, local residents no longer visit Phu's house after several sick patients went to the house and later died.
It's unclear whether local authorities are aware of Phu's business, however some of her patients are beginning to grow suspicious. Tran Van Thang, a Hanoian who suffers from lung cancer, heard about Phu's abilities and went to visit her in Thai Nguyen. However, when a crowd of grateful ex-patients arrived to thank Phu for her services, something was amiss.
“When I came here for the first time, I met a group of young men and women, who told me they had come to thank her for her wonderful treatment,” Thang told Thanh Nien. “But after a few months, when I came back to her house, I saw the same group with the same thanks.”
Probably best to stick with a doctor, Thang.
