Feet to Fire

In a trench, twelve feet long and six feet wide in good British soil at Carshalton, Surrey, workmen last week laid a ton of firewood and over that a wagonload of burnt oak and charcoal. This pyre was drenched with ten gallons of kerosene and ignited. When it had burned for eight hours and a wind had fanned the embers almost to white heat a scrawny young Hindu named Kuda Bux and a group of respectable-looking Britons appeared. Kuda Bux had promised that by faith he would walk barefooted across the glowing pit.

Firewalking is a common practice in India, in the South Sea Islands, in the Shinto temples of Japan. Explanations of how it is done differ widely. But the performance in Surrey made news on two continents because it was done under the eye of scientists who came with thermometers as well as skepticism.

The temperature of the fire-pit was measured at 800DEG F. The soles of Kuda Bux's feet were examined and no sign of callous thickening which might afford protection was found. A surgeon stuck a piece of court plaster under the arch of the dusky performer's right foot. Kuda Bux faced his audience, said: "Anything can be done with faith."

He stepped into the pit, walked slowly across the coals, his face contorted. When he had reached the end of the pit, he turned around, walked the length of it again. Requested to make the crossing a third time, he refused, weeping. Going up to Harry Price, secretary of the London Council for Psychical Investigation which had brought Kuda Bux from India and staged the firewalking, the Hindu mumbled:

"The fire has gone out of my control. Something has broken within me and my faith has gone out of me. Tests of the apparatus and the spectators have mentally and emotionally disturbed me."

Two medical students started to walk the pit. After a step or two they leaped out, exhibited ugly burns.

The surgeon inspected Kuda Bux's feet. They were not in the least burned; the strip of adhesive tape was not even scorched.

Skeptics in plenty are to be found who are convinced that firewalking is a trick. When an Indian rajah held an exhibition of this kind not long ago, a curious European wearing deerskin moccasins was reported to have followed the native performers across the fire-pit. His moccasins were not singed. In Manhattan last week Joseph Dunninger of the Universal Council for Psychic Research said that fire-walking may be made comfortable by lighting the blaze first along the centre line of the pit; by the time the edges have reached maximum heat, the centre line, along which the performer walks, has begun to cool. In an expose of Oriental magic, Professional Magician John Mulholland declared that the trick is done either by stepping on fast-cooling lava fragments or by applying "heat-resisting chemicals" to the soles. Some primitives who specialize in firewalking have enormously thick, tough soles which provide at least partial protection.

None of these explanations seemed to cover the case of Kuda Bux in Surrey. The logical man to ask about it was Dr. Charles Aubrey Pannet of University of London and St. Mary's Hospital, the surgeon who examined Bux's feet before and after the ordeal. But Dr. Pannet flatly refused to comment, said he would save his remarks for publication in the Lancet, British medical weekly.

Another dignitary who was on hand was Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad of University of London, onetime John Locke Scholar at Oxford, famed moral philosopher (Common Sense Ethics, Common Sense Theology, Mind and Matter, etc.). When newshawks asked him what he thought about the firewalking, Philosopher Joad said he was not prepared to make any observations for less than five guineas ($25).

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