Who are the fire-tamers?

[Laird]

Who are the fire-tamers?
Susanna Crossman
25 June 2026
Aeon

Yet, after our visit, I can’t stop thinking about the woman, her humility. The quiet power that enveloped the kitchen scene. Within weeks, the warts have gone and my daughter’s skin is clear; they never reappear. Questions inundate my mind: was it real? Did Mme Abgrall cure the warts? And who are the fire-tamers anyway?

Fast-forward a decade: according to a documentary by Radio France, there are more than 5,000 traditional healers in France today, and at least two-thirds of the French population have consulted such a practitioner. However, there are no official statistics about fire-taming, no organisation or diploma to validate or regulate this treatment. Instead, fire-tamers – women and men predominantly based in rural areas – are known to have a ‘gift’. Contacted by word-of-mouth, they help with shingles, burns, eczema, teething, skin complaints – pathologies associated with excessive redness or swelling, that is to say, with inflammation, a word stemming from the Latin for igniting a fire.

In a 2007 study, the French doctor Nicolas Perret described a telephone survey he conducted into the use of fire-taming in regional hospitals of the Haute-Savoie region in eastern France. Seven of the nine clinics and hospitals he contacted had an unofficial fire-taming protocol, either giving contact numbers or, as in the case of the emergency department in Annecy, the doctors and team fire-tame inside the hospital.

A French study of 500 radiotherapy patients in Auvergne from 2017 showed that more than half of them consulted a fire-tamer during treatment. In Switzerland, fire-tamers are called ‘secret-makers’, and their practice is on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list. Perret’s research shows that when patients believe in the ‘secret’, 87 per cent of them experience a reduction in pain. The question of belief is central to the practice.

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