The intelligent reader will readily observe that the Indians have made much more progress in botany than in mineralogy; because they prepare the greater part of their medicines from vegetables. This method corresponds very exactly with the system of Hippocrates. As a proof, one needs only recur to the second book of that physician, _De Diaeta_, where he treats of the powers and properties of vegetable and animal food, but passes over the mineral kingdom entirely. Medicines prepared from the last are for the most part, in India, attended with very dangerous consequences; because, in general, they are not only far less suited to human nature, but affect, in a very extraordinary manner, the weak bodies of the natives. The method and prescriptions of Van Swieten and Tissot are therefore almost impracticable in those climates. On the other hand, I know, from certain experience, that several physicians of Cochin, who followed the prescriptions of these two celebrated men, and ordered certain medicines in small doses, no longer employ them with confidence. The Indians never take an emetic or purgative without causing the physician to prescribe something for them by which the too violent effects of the medicine may be checked. They abhor phlebotomy, and employ only cupping; but this even very seldom. They are accustomed also never to pay the physician until they are completely freed from their disease. This is an excellent method to guard against the ignorance and quackery of those pretenders who sometimes prolong a disease merely that they may extort more gold from their patients. When a Malabar physician fails of a cure, the patient gives him a certain present, according to the trouble he has had, but he is under no obligation to pay him fully. In antient times the medicines of the Indians consisted chiefly, according to the testimony of Strabo, in regularity, temperance, and the choice of food. This is exactly the doctrine of Hippocrates. CHAPTER XII. _Author’s Voyage to Europe.--Some Account of the Island of Ceylon._