vermin of ignorance and superstition will scurry away to hide. That the coucher believes in himself is indisputable; that he resents the invasion of our Western operation is easily understood; and that he must disappear, washed out by the advancing flood of better methods, is as certain as the fate of the furrows left on the sand by last night’s tide. Meanwhile he has stopped a gap and filled a place in the life of a nation, and it behoves us, in our estimate of him, to remember that the highest earthly honour ever awarded was given to a woman whom the world despised and blamed, in the immortal words: “She hath done what she could.” It has been said of these men that they have no diagnostic powers, and it is quite certain that they sometimes couch the lens in cases of optic atrophy, of glaucoma, and of certain other diseases, in which such a step is useless and worse. It is fair to add that the number of cases of this kind which the writer saw was not large. This observation is the more significant, since he was keenly on the lookout for any instances of the kind, and that, too, during many years of Indian experience in an exceptionally large cataract practice. Ekambaram speaks of a case of operable cataract in which he had dilated the pupil, and on which he (purely experimentally, and with no intention of allowing it to be done) asked couchers if they would operate. As soon as they found the pupil was motionless and dilated, they declined to undertake any operation. He comments favourably on the acumen they thus displayed. A word may not be out of place on the subject of the covering of the head of the patient and surgeon with a cloth, as adopted by some few couchers during the operation. Such a procedure is, from the point of view of lost light, a handicap to the operator, but it has, from his way of looking at it, certain advantages. It shuts the patient off from the distractions of his surroundings, which are otherwise very public; it hides the actual operative procedure from prying eyes; and it conceals the facial and other evidence of pain. The greatest factor of all, in an Eastern land, is the air of mystery with which it shrouds the proceeding. The element of “jadu” (magic) so introduced is paramount in its psychologic interest. CHAPTER IV STATISTICAL