Railway Sleepers

They hope electrical currents can cure what doctors can’t.

A woman in Indonesia lies on train tracks hoping that the electricity that passes through it will cure her ailments.

Ignoring the red-andwhite danger sign, Sri Mulyati walks slowly to the train tracks outside Indonesia’s bustling capital, lies down and stretches her body across the rails.

ACHMAD Ibrahim/associated Press Villagers lie on a railway track for electricity therapy in Rawa Buaya, Jakarta, Indonesia. People have been participating in the treatment believing that the electricity current from the track could cure various diseases. Like the nearly dozen others lined up along the track, the 50-year-old diabetes patient has all but given up on doctors and can’t afford the expensive medicines they prescribe.
In her mind, she has only one option: electric therapy.
“I’ll keep doing this until I’m completely cured,” said Mulyati, twitching visibly as an oncoming passenger train sends an extra rush of current racing through her body.
She leaps from tracks as it approaches and then, after the last carriage rattles slowly by, climbs back into position.
Pseudo-medical treatments are wildly popular in many parts of Asia — where rumors about those miraculously cured after touching a magic stone or eating dung from sacred cows can attract hundreds, even thousands.

Medical experts say there is no evidence lying on the rails does any good. But Mulyati insists it provides more relief for her symptoms — high blood pressure, sleeplessness and high cholesterol — than any doctor has since she was first diagnosed with diabetes 13 years ago.
She turned to train track therapy last year after hearing a rumor about an ethnic Chinese man who was partially paralyzed by a stroke going to the tracks to kill himself, but instead finding himself cured. 

INDONESIAN AUTHORITIES are struggling to crack down on a dangerous trend among people too poor to afford medical treatment: lying on railways tracks in the belief that the electric current cures illness. Dozens turn up in Rawa Buaya every day, enticed by a rumour about a man paralysed by a stroke who went to the tracks to kill himself, but found he was cured. Authorities have threatened penalties of up to three months in prison or heavy fines – to no avail. “I want to be cured, so I have to come back,” said stroke victim Hadi Winoto, 50.