Another small-pox deity of India described by Mr. Dubois, a missionary,[283] is Mah-ry-Umma, who is supposed to incarnate herself in the disease. The natives, when vaccination was first introduced, objected to the practice for fear lest the goddess should be offended, as to prevent the small-pox would imply an objection to her becoming incarnate amongst them. The difficulty was overcome by the suggestion that the vaccination was a mild form of disease by which the goddess had chosen to visit her votaries, so that she might be worshipped with equal respect. “Even Siva is worshipped as a stone, especially that Siva who will afflict a child with epileptic fits, and then, speaking by its voice, will announce that he is Parchânana, the Five-faced, and is punishing the child for insulting his image.”[284] Surgeon-General Sir W. J. Moore, in an article on “The Origin and Progress of Hospitals in India,”[285] says that we may form a very good opinion of the condition of the whole of India in ancient times by recalling what was the state of medical relief in most of the native States previous to the institution of medical relief and sanitation in British districts. “Recently, in the Native States, there might be witnessed disease proceeding unchecked and uninterfered with, to a degree which certainly would not be allowed at present in civilized Europe. And especially was this evident in surgical disease, as illustrated by the following extract from an official document:[286]— “‘In former reports I have mentioned the extreme ignorance displayed by native “hukeems” or “vaids” of surgical principles. As a rule, all surgical disease is either wrongly treated, or let alone until treatment is unavailable by these uneducated practitioners. Their errors of omission and commission are not so easily ascertained in their medical, as in their surgical, practice. But in the latter, there is a glaring ignorance, not only from things requisite not being attempted, but from things unnecessary being performed, leading to the serious injury and often to the death of the patient. Thus, during my last tour, I saw at one village, an open scrofulous sore of the neck with the carotid artery isolated, and apparently on the point of giving way. At another village I witnessed an advanced cancer rapidly killing a man. In another place a woman had remained for days with a dislocated jaw, which was easily put _in situ_. Other forms of dislocation and fracture neglected are almost daily sights. At Bikaneer I amputated the leg of a man who eight months before fell from a camel; the bones of the leg protruding through the skin of the heel, and the foot being driven half-way up the front of the leg, _in which position it had been permitted to heal_! At the same place a woman was rapidly sinking from the results of extensive sinus of the breast, following abscess, and which only required free incisions for the restoration of health. I