Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 7.djvu/314

VAIDYAN for those who have not lived and worked among them to realise how easily the ryot falls a dupe to impudent self-advertisement. He is a simple kindly person, whose implicit trust in confident self-assertion will bring him to grief for many another generation. The vision of these poor unfortunate people sitting down in a dusty bazaar to let an ignorant charlatan thrust a dirty needle into their blind eyes has evoked the indignation of the English surgeon from the time of our first occupation of the country. Side by side with a well-equipped English hospital, which turns out its ninety odd per cent, of useful vision, there sits in the neighbouring bazaar even to-day the charlatan, whose fee is fixed at anything from 3d. to 8 shillings, plus, in every case, a fowl or other animal. The latter is ostensibly for sacrificial purposes, but I understand ends uniformly in the Vaithyan's curry-pot. Weirdest, perhaps, of all the Vaithyan's methods is the use of the saffron-coloured rag, with which pus is wiped away from the patient's inflamed eye. On this colour, the pus, etc., cannot be seen, and therefore all is well. It is the fabled ostrich again, only this time in real life, with vital interests at stake." It is noted * in connection with the various classes of Nambūtiri Brāhmans that "the Vaidyans or physicians, known as Mūssads, are to study the medical science, and to practice the same. As the profession of a doctor necessitates the performance of surgical operations entailing the shedding of blood, the Mūssads are considered as slightly degraded."

Further information concerning native medicine-men will be found in the articles on Kusavans and Mandulas.