Page:Journey to Lhasa and Central Tibet.djvu/297

 During the months of January and February, when the great mon-lam (or prayer-meeting) fair takes place at Lhasa, the city is occasionally visited by a highly infectious disease which causes great havoc among the people when the crowd is great. When the disease is not properly treated the patient generally dies before the tenth day, but those cases which have passed the thirteenth day are considered hopeful. Tibetan physicians, by watching this disease in its different phases, have achieved remarkable success in treating it with their indigenous drugs.

In Lhasa, Shigatse, and other towns and monasteries of Tibet, the principal disease from which people suffer and die is paralysis. Five different kinds of this disease are recognized by Tibetan physicians, who also profess to have observed that the first symptoms generally show themselves on the 4th, 8th, 11th, 15th, 18th, 22nd, 25th, or 29th day of the lunar month. Persons who have passed their sixtieth year seldom survive a paralytic stroke of any kind. All other cases in their milder forms are curable by proper and regular medical treatment.

Leprosy is prevalent in most of the countries of High Asia. It is variously called glud-nad, "the nag's (serpent's) disease," and mje-nad, the “corroding malady,” and is believed to originate from various causes, fanciful and real. By digging in pestilential soil where snakes live, turning up stones under which these reptiles lurk, felling poisonous trees, throwing tea, water, or cooked food and other refuse on the blazing hearth, men are said to excite the wrath of the Nagas and mischievous spirits of the upper and nether worlds, who delight in working the ruin of the human race. They spread this hateful malady by the exhalation of their breath, by their poisonous touch or malignant glance, or even by the power of their malignant wish. The "charmed banner" is a great preventive of these evils. The people of High Asia generally fix banners with printed charms thereon near to or on their houses, as they are believed to prevent the Nagas entering them. Leprosy is likewise assumed to be the