In China, the sick are being set on fire to cure their ills

A therapist pours alcohol over a patient and sets him alight – for some in China, playing with fire is a treatment for illness.

So-called “fire therapy”, which proponents claim can cure stress, indigestion, infertility, and even cancer, has been used for hundreds of years and recently garnered a blaze of attention in Chinese media. There's no orthodox medical evidence that it is effective, a fact that matters little to one of China’s most prominent fire therapists.