1 69
2 it broke, and the knee was very much inflamed and swollen.
3 Feeling an accumulation of matter, I made an incision, upon
4 which it began to flow. I kept the wound open for several
5 days, and ordered the swollen parts to be embrocated with wax-
6 oil, and in a few days it was entirely healed. In a severe
7 swelling of the testicles, which was the consequence of an
8 external injury, the same remedy proved efficacious.
9 Oil distilled from wax (cerelaeum) is employed by the native
10 physicians of the East in various diseases, especially in paralysis,
11 contractions, swellings, wounds, itching, impotence, colds and
12 cholera-morbus. The embrocations are generally performed in
13 the rays of the sun. In cholera-morbus, they drink hot broth
14 afterwards ; hot bricks are enveloped in rugs and applied to the
15 soles of the feet, they are then covered with woollen- sheets over
16 the head, to produce perspiration. In similar cases, the Bokha-
17 rians administer a Turcoman-sudorific remedy , with which a
18 native physician assured me he had cured many cholera patients.
19 The medicament is as cheap as it is simple, and should be used
20 in case no other can be obtained at the moment. They procure
21 a quantity of wheaten bran, sift it seven times, and as many
22 times wash it superficially, then rub it in water with the fingers*
23 and strain it ; the strained water is simmered until reduced to
24 one-half, to which they add some garlic and almond oil, and it is
25 then drunk lukewarm. The garlic serves, as the physician told
26 me, to drive away the evil spirits. The physicians of Europe may
27 learn by this what remedies ought to be employed when patients
28 are haunted by evil spirits, a thing which occurs occasionally in
29 the case of ladies. The same doctor also informed me by what
30 means they got rid of the cholera at Bokhara. A procession
31 was arranged, during which they buried in the middle of the
32 city a new horse-hide, which is easily procured there ; as the
33 inhabitants of Bokhara eat more horse-flesh than any other kind
34 of meat, and which is probably the cause of this odd idea.
35 The Affghans have also a peculiar method of curing nervous
36 fevers. They envelop the patient in the skin of a newly-killed
37 animal (goat or sheep), in which he falls into a perspiration, and
38 H 2