Unidentified Kurtzen patient

"Suddenly, the shaman took one of the boy's totems, which he had been wearing around his neck, and held it up. The boy stood up and, throwing his head back, swallowed the small, beaded object, string and all. I was certain something so large would cause him to choke, or would get stuck in his digestive tract. But according to the shaman, they do this all the time, and with the passing of the totem, so, too, passes the disease."

- Senior Anthropologist Mammon Hoole, on a Kurtzen healing ceremony

An ailing Kurtzen boy was the subject of a healing ceremony witnessed by the Shi'ido Senior Anthropologist Mammon Hoole during his fieldwork on the planet Bakura. To heal the boy, a shaman passed a totem through the boy's throat. Although Hoole feared the trinket would cause the boy to choke, it went down safely. The shaman reported that once the totem passed, the boy's sickness would pass as well. Hoole later described the ceremony in his entry on the Kurtzen species in The Essential Guide to Alien Species, published during the regime of the New Republic.