Komara-pat, the god of medicine, mentioned in the first legend, is sacrificed to by all doctors in Siam at the expense of their patients, and in the stories told of him, seems to have many of the qualities of the Aswins, two grotesque personages in the Rig Veda, who were the general practitioners of medicine amongst the Aryans. In the Rig Veda they are described as brothers of the sun, and travel in three-cornered, three-wheeled cars drawn by asses. They are depicted as half-comic, half-serious personages, with very long arms, and are concerned in every odd legend in the Veda. To a holy man who was beheaded for revealing to them forbidden science, they presented a horse’s head, and stuck it on his neck in place of his own head. They enabled the lame to walk and the blind to see, and restored an “aged man to youth, as a wheelwright repairs a worn-out car.” These professors in healing seem to be the progenitors of the jugglers, magicians, and quacks found in all ages, not only in the East, but in Europe. A Siamese doctor, according to an account given by a medical missionary, is distinguished from other folk by his medicine-box, wrapped up in a piece of figured muslin or some silken or woollen fabric, holding half a bushel, more or less, of pills and powders, carried under his arm or in his little skiff, or in the arms of a single servant. As the customs of the country require physicians to remain day and night with their patients while suffering under grave diseases, it is impossible for them to attend upon many persons at a time. Doctors are therefore far from being in the possession of a lucrative practice, and few are lucky enough to be able to save sufficient to enable them to acquire a teak-built house surrounded by an orchard, and support two or three wives, together with a growing family. Polygamy among them is accounted a mark of opulent distinction, and is looked upon as a favour which has descended to them by virtue of good deeds performed in previous states of existence. The Siamese, according to the same authority, put diseases down to disturbances in the four elements, _ahpo_ (water), _lom_ (wind), _dacho_ (fire), and the earth. Water produces dropsy; wind produces rheumatism, epilepsy, apoplexy, headache, flatulency, colic, inflammation, &c.; fire produces all kinds of fevers, measles, boils, smallpox, &c.; and the earth, by its invisible and impalpable mists and vapours, induces cholera and other terrible plagues. The spirits, both good and evil, have great power over these four elements internally and externally, and can produce a multitude of bodily ailments. The people, knowing that they have accumulated much demerit in their present state of existence as well as for their sins in their innumerable previous existences, feel themselves at the mercy of these spirits, and do all they possibly can to propitiate them.