It is a remarkable fact that even now, when this science may be said to be in a retrogressive stage both for want of adequate culture as well as of sufficient encouragement, there are a few Hindoo _kobirajes_[99] in this City, and in other parts of the country, whose treatment in chronic cases of fever, dysentery, diarrhoea, phthisis, pulmonary consumption, asthma, &c., proves, in a great measure, successful. Hence in almost every respectable Hindoo family there is a competent _kobiraj_, who is always consulted in cases of a serious nature. It is generally considered that on the subject of pulsation greater weight is attached to the opinion of a Hindoo _kobiraj_ than to that of an English doctor. By the pulse, in the different parts of our physical organisation, the state of the body may be ascertained and suitable remedies applied. In cases of severe indisposition among the Hindoos, the friends of a patient have not only to contend against the struggle between life and death, but to closely watch the last expiring flicker of vitality that he may be removed in time to the banks of the sacred stream for insuring his entrance into heaven. It has been urged by some native physicians that the Sanskrit work, _Ayurveda_, above-mentioned, treats of anatomy and of the doctrine of the circulation of the blood. If this be true, great credit is doubtless due to its author for having made in a comparatively dark age such considerable advances in an important branch of medical science, without which medicine and surgery are of little avail. Chemistry, which enables us to distinguish the real properties of different substances, was certainly not unknown to the Hindoo physicians, because their medicines indicate a scientific selection of several ingredients mixed together to produce a certain result. But it can by no means be asserted that the people ever attained to a thorough knowledge, either in the one or the other, which can bear comparison with the perfection of the modern European system. In almost every department of human knowledge steady progress is the grand characteristic of the age, but in this country unhappily a spirit of scientific investigation has very nearly been extinguished simply for want of adequate cultivation and support.