Page:Thirty-five years in the East.djvu/111

Rh At Bokhara, I found that the guinea-worm ( Dracun-culus) occurred very frequently. At Cabul, I saw a strange case of this kind, in which a merchant had drunk the water from which it orginates a year previously at Bombay. The worm was at the hollow of the knee. Upon its appearing and being pulled, it broke, and the knee was very much inflamed and swollen. Feeling an accumulation of matter, I made an incision, upon which it began to flow. I kept the wound open for several days, and ordered the swollen parts to be embrocated with wax-oil, and in a few days it was entirely healed. In a severe swelling of the testicles, which was the consequence of an external injury, the same remedy proved efficacious.

Oil distilled from wax (cerelaeum ) is employed by the native physicians of the East in various diseases, especially in paralysis, contractions, swellings, wounds, itching, impotence, colds and cholera-morbus. The embrocations are generally performed in the rays of the sun. In cholera-morbus, they drink hot broth afterwards ; hot bricks are enveloped in rugs and applied to the soles of the feet, they are then covered with woollen-sheets over the head, to produce perspiration. In similar cases, the Bokharians administer a Turcoman-sudorific remedy, with which a native physician assured me he had cured many cholera patients. The medicament is as cheap as it is simple, and should be used in case no other can be obtained at the moment. They procure a quantity of wheaten bran, sift it seven times, and as many times wash it superficially, then rub it in water with the fingers, and strain it ; the strained water is simmered until reduced to one-half, to which they add some garlic and almond oil, and it is then drunk luke-warm. The garlic serves, as the physician told me, to drive away the evil spirits. The physicians of Europe may learn by this what remedies ought to be employed when patients are haunted by evil spirits, a thing which occurs occasionally in the case of ladies. The same doctor also informed me by what means they got rid of the cholera at Bokhara. A procession was arranged, during which they