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2 per primam intentionem ; fatal cases seldom occur, but a fistula
3 frequently ensues. There are also native oculists at Lahore,
4 who are Musselmen. They sit in the streets, operating with
5 rude instruments ; but in spite of their theoretical knowledge,
6 which cannot be denied, they blind more patients than they
7 cure. The cataract they depress by means of two instruments,
8 a lancet and an awl.
9 The three jerahs (native surgeons), also Mahomedans, whom
10 the durbar appointed to be my assistants at the hospitals, did
11 not possess much skill, and besides their ointment boxes they
12 had only some razors, lancets, pincers for drawing teeth, and
13 cupping-apparatus. Of operations with other instruments they
14 had no conception. They did not even know how to bind
15 an artery, and amputation was a process of which they had
16 never heard. My operations for the extraction of the stone
17 seemed to them a miracle; they soon, however, became pro-
18 ficient in the operations of tapping and vaccination, for both
19 of which they had a strong inclination.
20 In the Punjab, the inhabitants practice a sort of animal-
21 magnetism, which they call yam, or manter. It is employed for
22 inflammatory, rheumatic and nervous pains, especially in the
23 eyes, ears, teeth, &c. The operator, a man or woman, places
24 himself opposite the patient, holding a green branch or a small
25 stick in his hand ; with this he drives, according to his assertion,
26 the evil spirit from the affected parts, by striking the patient’s
27 body occasionally with his instrument, in a downward direction.
28 With that he mixes a little hocus-pocus, by murmuring odd-
29 sounding words, and at intervals blowing upon the affected parts.
30 The pulse is considered of very great importance in the east ;
31 and they believe the doctors are able to investigate by it the most
32 latent diseases. Uroscopy is also in credit among the natives.
33 Sometimes I could not forbear laughing, when at consultations
34 with the hakims; but I thought that when among wolves one
35 must howl also. On one occasion, we deliberated about curing
36 a chronic gonorrhoea, on which occasion a hakim proposed the
37 n 2