Garlic Therapy

While we were in Sham Shui Po camp there we got some money in ‘42 around Christmas time it seems from the Pope or something and we also had some money coming from the Japanese. NCO’s got, what was it NCO’s got 15 cents a day and soldiers got 10 cents a day. We got this money and then they brought in some garlic and that made the rice taste much better. At first, I’d just get a couple of toes out of a bulb because it cost a yen a pound at the time and I’d get a couple and cut ‘em up or stick ‘em in with my rice and the rice tasted a lot better with the garlic flavor to them. I did that for quite a while and I didn’t get a septic sore. In fact, I’d had a touch of pellagra. I don’t know whether you have heard what pellagra is. It’s sort of a numbness around the mouth and also a numbness around your anal and if it got too bad you wouldn’t be able to tell that you were doing it in your pants before you realize it was in your pants but this garlic seemed to clear it up and at first as I said I was only using a couple of toes of the garlic. Afterwards I was putting a whole bulb in a bowl of rice. It kept me away from septic sores and I try to tell some of these other guys that were in the company because some of them had some terrible septic sores. “Eat garlic!” “Oh, I couldn’t eat garlic.” I said, “Who are you worried about. Eat your garlic. It will purify your blood. You won’t have all these septic sores that you have to get ripped off all the time.” But so many of them wouldn’t touch it. They wouldn’t touch the garlic and I said, “Boy, look I haven’t got any septic sores. Anybody that’s eaten garlic hasn’t got septic sores so why don’t you do it? ” So I don’t know if any of them did. I know McLaughlin, he never did. He died with septic sores, I think.