Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/198

138 collected tend additionally to illustrate their character and condition, it would be improper to omit them. They are submitted with deference to those who may have made professional inquiries, and can form a professional judgment on the subject.

The number of those who may be called general practitioners and who rank highest in the native medical profession in Nattore, is 123, of whom 89 are Hindus and 34 are Mahomedans. The Medical School at Vaidya Belghariya possesses considerable interest, since it is, as far as I can ascertain, the only institution of the kind in the district, and the number of such institutions throughout Bengal is, I believe, very limited. The two medical teachers of this school are employed as domestic physicians by two wealthy families, and they have eaeheach [sic] also a respectable general practice. As a domestic physician, the junior teacher has a fixed salary of twenty-five rupees a month; while the senior teacher in the same capacity has only fifteen rupees a month, and that only as long as his attendance may be required during periods of sickness in the family that employs him. I have spoken of that family as wealthy, but it is only comparatively so, being in very reduced circumstances; and to that cause rather than to the low estimation in which the physician is held, we must ascribe the scanty remuneration he receives. At another place, Hajra Nattore, No. 26, there are three educated Hindu practitioners, all three brahmans and brothers and more or less acquainted with Sanscrit, having acquired the grammar of the language at Bejpara Amhatti, and subsequently applied their knowledge of it to the study of the medical works in that language. The eldest has practised since he was eighteen, and he is now sixty-two years of age, and employs his leisure in instructing his two nephews. On an average of the year he estimates the income derived from his practice at five rupees a month, while one of his brothers who is in less repute estimates his own income at three rupees. At a third place, Haridev Khalasi, No. 100, there are four educated Hindu practitioners, three of whom appeared to be in considerable repute for skill and learning. They were all absent, and I had not an opportunity of conversing with them; but their neighbours and friends estimated their monthly professional income at eight, ten, and twelve rupees, respectively. There are at most two or three other educated Hindu physicians in Nattore, and all the rest are professionally uneducated, the only knowledge they possess of medicine being derived from Bengali translations of Sanscrit works which describe the symptoms of the principal diseases and prescribe the articles of the native materia medica that should be employed for their cure, and the proportions in which they should be compounded. I have not been able to ascertain that there is a single educated Musalman physician in Nattore, and consequently the 34 Mahomedan practitioners I have mentioned, rank with the uneducated class of Hindu practitioners, deriving all their knowledge of medicine from Bengali