tended that, on all former occasions, it had been
successful. The disease was insanity, and the fatal
prescription consisted in holding the patient’s head
over a pot of ignited sulphur to bring him to his
senses. He struggled of course violently, but six
stout villagers employed to hold him over the poisonous
fumes rendered his struggles ineffectual, and
when the dose was administered to the satisfaction
of the physician, animation was gone past restoration.
■ bosio
The simplicity of the practice usually pursued
must be of incalculable benefit to the patient.
This simplicity excludes the administration of remedies
prescribed upon such erroneous and mischievous
hypotheses, as never fail to be formed by
barbarians when they begin to speculate on the
theory of diseases. It is to the absence of such
opinions that I think we ought, in some measure
at least, to ascribe the natural and judicious practice
followed by the people of these countries in
all febrile disorders; Familiarized in their warm
climate, and in a country abounding in rivers or
brooks, to frequent bathings and ablutions, the
Indian islanders naturally pursue in sickness What
has conduced to their comfort in health. The
cold affusion in fever, a bold innovation among us,
has been practised from time immemorial by the
Indian islanders. It is the Malays who carry the
use of the cold-bath in febrile complaints to the
greatest length;* They use it not only in remittent
and intermittent fevers, but also in small-pox. In
the latter oomplaint the patient, exposed naked to a
stream of fresh air, is constantly sprinkled with cold
water from a brush, and even bathed in a stream of
running water. In 1810, six Malays, the eldest of
whom was fifty, and the youngest at least five and
twenty, were under confinement at Penang on
charges of piracy. The whole of them were
seized with small-pox, affording a striking presumption
of the unfrequent returns of the epidemie
in their country, which was the territory of
Queda where it borders on Siam. While ill in
the hospital, and covered with the eruption, they
were discovered bathing in the brook which passed
by; lying down, in short, naked in. the running
stream. They were permitted to persevere
in this practice, and they all recovered;
In surgical disorders, where the advantages of
science and -skill are less equivocal; the ignorartce
of the Indian islanders is attended with all the
bad consequences that 'might he expected; From
the strength of their constitutions, and the moderation
of their lives, they have indeed frequent
recoveries from injuries under which Europeans
in any climate would sink, and particularly in
these warm and damp regions where wounds
are so apt to terminate in the fatal symptom of
lock-jaw.