Page:Pearl of Asia (Child JT, 1892).pdf/325

Rh its blowing downward, It is seldom that a disease runs its course without all of the elements being called into play, water especially, as in eases of dropsy, which is caused by the fire not having sufficient force to dry up the water, as the sun does the mists and fog, and they think that fever and cholera are caused by the invisible mists and vapors that exhale from the ground, miasma. They also believe that spirits, good and evil, produce a multitude of human ills, and the people are in continual dread of them, conscious of the demerit that has accrued to them since the beginning of their existence, hence they perform many acts in the way of propitiating them. They have an idea that medicines have the power to counteract the element deranged and thus restore the body to health. The origin of medicine is claimed to be miraculous and they have nostrums for each and every ailment; for instance, a remedy for the head would be very different from that for the bowels. A snuff, a plaster to the temples or a wash for the eyes may calm the wind in the head, while something entirely different, taken internally, will dissipate the storm in that region upward or downward, or through the pores of the skin; wind may also be withdrawn by cuping, poulticing, etc., in fact that health may be restored by medicines which have the power to drive the surplus elements out of the system or to parts of the system that need it. Giddiness they attribute to a deficiency of wind blowing upward, hence a vacuum in the brain; their mode of treatment is to make the patient eat his fill and then go to sleep. For small-pox and cutaneous eruptions, they use a variety of medicated effusions of a cooling nature. If the disease is from the effects of too much