also saw a man dying of strangulated hernia, without the slightest idea of or attempt at relief on the part of the native practitioners. And so on, throughout almost the whole range of surgery, I have from time to time witnessed the most lamentable results from the malpractices, or from the absence of practice on the part of the Native Doctors.’ “As mentioned in the above extract, the errors of omission and commission are not so easily ascertained in medical as in surgical cases. But the great majority of those stricken by disease, such as inflammations and fevers, derived as little benefit from medicine as did the Romans when, according to Pliny, physicians were banished from the Imperial City during many years. For few indeed of the higher class and comparatively better educated ‘hukeems’ or ‘vaids’ would minister to the poor who were unable to pay their fees; and of the populations of India the great majority are and always were poor. Steeped in continually augmenting superstition and ignorance, if the poor received medical aid at all, it was from the hands of the equally ignorant and superstitious village ‘Kabiraj,’ who, unlike their more noble Aryan predecessors, did not even ‘draw physic from the fields,’ although they may have used a charm, such as a peacock’s feather tied round the affected part! If the poor got well, they got well; and as most diseases have a tendency to terminate in health, many did recover. If a fatal termination resulted, it was attributed to _nusseeb_ or destiny, or the gods were blamed. Insane persons, if harmless, were allowed to ramble about the streets; if violent, they were chained in the most convenient place. The jails of the Native States were also in an unparalleled unsanitary condition, for no medical aid whatever was provided; as Coleridge said of Coldbath Fields, these jails might have given His Satanic Majesty a hint for improving Hades. Fatalism combined with ignorance, and a consequent utter unbelief in any measures of sanitation, resulted in the absence of all measures of precaution during epidemics of contagious disease. During the prevalence of small-pox, children might be seen by scores, in every stage of the disease, playing or lying about the streets. During an epidemic of cholera, not one precautionary measure was ever adopted—except by the wild Bheels, who invariably moved, leaving their villages for a time for the open jungle; thus forestalling the most approved method of preventing cholera adopted for British troops, viz., marching away from the infected area.