Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057352).pdf/428

 420 SUL Native practitioners. There are few, if any, native practitioners of repute, either Hindu or Musalman, in the district. The village Baid or Kabiráj possesses at most but a smattering of medical knowledge, though his pharmacopæia is extensive and varied enough. His system of treat- ment appears to be founded on the humoural pathology, which ascribes all disease to the derangement of the four humours--blood, bile, mucous, and wind. Disturbance of the normal balance of the bumour gives rise to disease, and the curative means employed are directed to restoring the normal balance. This is first attempted by reduction and regulation of diet, the food allowed being of a stimulating or non-stimulating nature, according as the disease is understood to be caused by cold or heat. Should these means fail bloodletting, emetics, or purgatives are employed to expel the peccant homour; the first when the patient is plethoric, the second when the mucous humour is in excess, and the last especially when the bile or wind is in undue abundance. Besides these means they appear to use a great variety of medicines whose chief merit is that they are either cooling or heating in their properties. They also employ tonics largely, both vegetable and mineral. Their prescriptions are usualy very complicated, and include a large number of substances. The ingredients are sometimes of an extraordi- nary nature-such articles as gold, silver, pearls, and precious stones being very commonly prescribed. There seems in superficial inquiry to be but little difference between the system of the Kabiraj and that of the Kakim, except that the treat- ment of the former is more stimulant and less exhausting to the patient than that of the Hakim, The following is a list of some of the drugs used by them besides those in the list above given :- Vegetable. Atis. Mineral, Arsenic. Cinnabar. Chiretta, Bichloride of piercury. Nim. Gold. Pepper. Silver, Rasot. Sulphate of copper. Aconite. Antimony. Lotus root, &C., &e. The natives of the district are of fair average physique, though judged by an English standard they are, taken as a wholc, both undersized and deficient in bony and muscular development. Amongst the higher casteg there are many tall well built men to be met with, and even amongst the lower castes there are many exceptions to the general rule of inferiority of physique, still the great mass of the population are short in stature com. pared with Englishmen and greatly inferior in muscle. The difference in the nature of their dict and the scanty way in which the labouring natire