without the bounds of Christian civilization is greater than is commonly supposed, especially in populous Asia, where all the causes of disease existing at home, and many more, are found in operation, without the alleviation of scientific medicine, and of that which is its inseparable and invaluable attendant-well-directed nursing. But it is not the absence of science, properly so called, that is the only, or, perhaps, the worst evil. Infinite mischiefs arise from false science and the use of thousands of absurd or destructive nostrums, with which the sick are plied on needful and on needless occasions. It is an error to imagine that the natural restorative powers of the body are trusted to in the absence of correct science. The contrary is the fact. The number and variety of remedies are everywhere great, in proportion to the ignorance of true science. As real science advances, we confide the more to nature, and cease interference with those among her operations to the com pletion of which experience has proved her to be adequate. We afford help, it is true, when needed, but so as to aid without encumbering to strengthen nature when too weak, and to regulate her processes when they may chance to be uncertain or wayward. But we never disregard her powers until their impotence is become manifest.

It has been often affirmed, for example, on slender authority, that childbirth among barbarians and in the more civilized regions of the east, is always safe and easy. The assertion is entirely erroneous- —a remnant, we may call it, of those too hastily formed opinions concerning the influence of simple habits and of a warm climate on the human frame, to which the Baron Montesquieu about a century ago gave such general currency. That a warm climate, and the manner of living which it seems almost to necessitate, exercise a modifying effect on the mind and body of the inhabitants, there can be no doubt, but still not of the nature here supposed. The numberless allusions in scripture to the hour of sorrow' peculiar to woman, and that in reference to the natives of so warm a climate as Palestine, might almost have sufficed to dissipate an idea so totally baseless.

The mortality of native women, in connexion with this period, in Calcutta, is shown from recent official documents, to be so enormous as almost to exceed belief. On scarcely any other authority than that of a government inquiry, and witnesses beyond suspicion of exaggerating the evils they depict, would it be possible to credit the statements given concerning the absurd and mischievous treatment of the unhappy women, and

the consequent mortality.* This is a subject on which, of course, we cannot be expected to enlarge, though all the cir cumstances referred to deserve to be known, that, if possible, an adequate remedy may be applied. The deaths in childbirth are reported as not fewer than four, and sometimes fire, in every twenty instances: a rate tenfold greater than has ever been known even in the Lying-in Hospitals of Europe. This estimate of mortality, resting at first on the authority of the Baboo Moodusoodun Gupta, a Hindu physician, though eminent for his learning and thorough acquaintance with European science, appears to have tasked the credulity of the Committee of Inquiry, and led them to seek further evidence. In conse quence, Mr. Martin, a surgeon long conversant with native practice, was examined as to his opinion of the Baboo's estimate, who, in reply, states that the treatment altogether of the native women in those circumstances is pernicious-that he is surprised the mortality is not even greater. Few European women,' says he, 'would survive it.'+

It may be true, and, from inquiry, we believe it is, that this abuse of common sense in the management of such patients is less flagrant in the rest of India than it is in the capital. But from hints in Lieut.-Colonel Sykes' report on the Government Charitable Dispensaries in India, there is reason to infer that the evil is by no means limited to Calcutta. Indeed, in Dr. Wise's Commentary on Hindu Medicine, we have proof that the destructive customs among the Hindus alluded to have prevailed from ancient times.‡

Affection and judgment in the management and nursing of children do not always go together even in England; but the Hindu physician before mentioned states that, in Hindustan, children from the time of their birth are subjected to great danger from the circumstances to which they are exposed, in common with their mothers, except that they are not drugged with spices and the consequences are fatal fevers and tetanus. He emphatically says, 'I do not see in the town of Calcutta any

*The report whose title stands at the beginning of this article is, with the nume rous appendices, a voluminous mass of the most curious and interesting information concerning the sanitary condition of Calcutta and environs, furnished by a great variety of persons, Hindu and European-judges, coroners, engineers, police magistrates, physicians, surgeons, &c. Scarce a topic that concerns the health and well-being of a great city but is here amply discussed and illustrated. No such fal report, so far as we know, has ever been made in reference to the state of public health of any of the capital cities of Europe.

+ Appendix D, page 96. A further corroboration is found in the evidence of Dr. Duncan Stewart in the same appendix, D, page 156. Also in this gentleman's paper in the report of the Medical College of Bengal for the year 1846-7. tWise. Book v. chap 1.

'children that are in perfect health. But it is not in the capital solely that such evils flourish: intimations of their existence in quarters of the country remotely apart are to be found in Lieut.-Colonel Sykes's report on Native Dispensaries. The native sub-assistant surgeon of the Allahabad Dispensary describes a very fatal infant's disease named 'Mithooa,' so called from its being absurdly supposed to arise from the sweetness of the mother's milk, but which appears to resemble the mesenteric wasting of Europe. At about the second month of its infantile life,' says this humane Hindu,

6

Every child is made to take opium, wine, or some other narcotic drug, to lull it to sleep. This unnatural and cruel practice has gained so firm a footing, in this city in particular, that even the rich mothers, who can easily afford servants for their children-nay, who have them already-indulge in it frequently.'-'The ample opportunity (leisure) afforded to the mother by this inhuman course, and the very small number of times she is required to suckle the child, induce her soon to overlook the evil and dangerous consequences, and to resume her task of destruction.'-Journal, Stat. Society, vol. x., p. xiii.

The difficulties which stand in the way of the treatment of diseases in the Hindu female, though not insurmountable, are extremely formidable, and ought to be well understood by those who would administer aid to the natives. It is probable (from intimations in the Fever Hospital report) that the obstacles are fewer in the chief cities than in the provinces. In Calcutta, to both Mahometan and Hindu females admission may be obtained, at all events when the complaint has become alarming; but even there prejudice is fortified by indifference. Dr. Duncan Stewart, alluding to the natives in the capital, says, 'Un"happily, the degrading religion of the Hindus inculcates no 'better moral than fatalism, and considers females and infants, except the first born, as objects of much inferior consideration to a cow.'

The widespread, it might seem almost universal, prevalence of sickness and disease must not be overlooked. In the four sickly months of the year, from August to November, the Hindu physician before mentioned estimates the number in the different Thannahs of Calcutta affected with fevers at eighteen thousand. Others assert that this is even below the truth. The same witness affirms that nearly two-thirds of the native population suffer from dyspepsia, which, though not itself fatal, is a

* Mr Reid, another medical witness, gives it as his opinion that one fourth of the native children have disease of the spleen, a consequence of remittent and intermittent fevers. Appendix F, page 70.

source of much debility, and lays the foundation of some of their most fatal diseases-dysenteries and fluxes. Concerning the general aspect of Hindu society in respect of health, an experienced surgeon, Mr. Brett, says, the prevalence of disease among the lower orders is very striking to an European 'medical man in all great cities in India, but much more in 'Calcutta. Patients, who in England are numbered by hundreds, or by thousands, are here counted by hundreds of thousands. In two dispensaries alone, the Colingah and the Gurranhutta-the applicants for relief in the four years ending 1837, were six hundred and forty six thousand six hundred and eighteen, namely, for medical advice and medicines, three hundred and forty three thousand five hundred and fifty eight, or 85,889 each year; and for surgical assistance three hundred and three thousand and sixty; or at the yearly rate of 75,765. The sickli ness, as distinguished from severe disease, may be judged of from the fact that, among the medical class of patients, those for rheumatism alone amounted to a hundred and two thousand three hundred and three; whilst among the surgical class there were fifty two thousand and sixty-six suffering from diseases of the skin; and with ailments, classed under the head of 'ulcers, abscesses, cancers, &c.,' the enormous number of one hundred and ninety thousand and twenty-three, or 47,405, year by year! In glancing at the reports of the Government charitable dispensaries in the provinces, besides a multitude of patients with ulcers and the like, we notice a number of maladies being successfully treated, which the medical staff of a remote mission station (were such once attached) would be equally able to relieve or cure. We now refer to cataract, and other curable diseases of the eye. In the Calcutta Eye Infirmary and Dis pensary, out of six thousand eight hundred and seventy-seven eve cases admitted in four years, occurs the very high proportion of 1012 afflicted with cataracts. Among the patients of the seventeen provincial dispensaries we remark eight hundred and twenty-one cases of cataract admitted during the brief period of their establishment, being, at the date of Colonel Sykes' report, about two years and a half.

Where disease in a population is so rife, so too probably will be death. For the provincial districts we have no data on this head, but the latest estimate for Calcutta, on the annual average of eleven years, supplied in one of Lieutenant-Colonel Sykes' statistical papers,* gives the deaths as nearly one to nineteen of the population; a very high ratio; but which, in

* On the Population and Mortality of Calcutta, by Lieutenant-Colonel Sykes. -Stat. Journal, vol. viii. p. 50.

this instance, is inhanced by the fact that owing to a great disproportion between the sexes in Calcutta,-one hundred males to fifty eight females,-there can be only a comparatively small number of children, (the class which in Europe always yields the largest proportion of the deaths,) and, consequently, there must be a terrible waste of adult life.

The medical knowledge of the modern Hindus demands scarcely a passing notice, being little in amount, and what there is, of very inferior quality. In their theory, they are represented by Dr. Duncan Stewart as Brownonians of the first order, who dread whatever tends to lessen vital action. Their decoctions or ptisans are innumerable, but all tonic and excitant, and they are administered without reference to the periods of remission and exacerbation.

The mineral medicines most in use amongst them,' he remarks, are a sulphuret of mercury and white arsenic, which are sometimes employed with unquestionable and wonderful benefit, and as often with great and terrible evil consequences. In feeling the pulse, a native Hukeem lays three fingers along the radial artery; if the vessel cannot be felt to throb with equal force upon the most distant, as on the first finger, extreme danger is apprehended, and recourse had forthwith to ptisans, pills, and powders.'-Appendix D, p. 158.

Of the structure of the human body, the functions of the various organs in health, the effects of disease on those organs, and practical medicine, including operative surgery, the modern Hindus know next to nothing. Anciently, about three centuries before the Christian era, the healing art would seem to have been cultivated with such ardour as enabled them to produce systematic writings on medicine, some of which are still extant; the knowledge being derived, among other sources, from dissection of the body. But so ignorant were Europeans of the medical literature of the Hindus, that even Sir William Jones could write, there is no evidence that, in any language of Asia, there exists one original treatise on medicine considered as a science.'* This opinion Dr. Wise, in his Commentary, abundantly refutes; and he agrees with Dr. Royle and Professor Wilson, that the Arabians in the eighth century appear to have studied the Hindu works before those of the Greeks. At present, owing to various causes, some of which have been long in operation, the Hindus are almost in as profound ignorance of their own famous authors as the Europeans.

'More lately,' says Dr. Wise, 'the diffusion of the European system of medicine operated as a discouragement to the study of Sanscrit * Dr. Wise's Preface, p. iv.