3o6 An Account of Gurhwal, [Sess. 



attend to the sick are the fortunate persons who have already 

 had the disease, and have recovered. 



The worst epidemic I saw was in 1877. It was a terrible 

 disease to have to treat, as no medicines I gave seemed to do 

 any good. In other diseases — even in cholera — I myself 

 believed in the remedies I administered, and the friends of 

 the patients, and the patients themselves, were most anxious 

 to get medicine from me ; but in this disease they protested 

 that all medicine was absolutely useless. Twice I had quoted 

 to me a sad couplet of verse, which I felt was only too 

 true : — ■ 



" Aukhade Ganga toyam, 

 Baidyo Narain Hari" — 



" All medicine is useless ; no one can save us but God." 

 When I went to see a village where plague was said to have 

 broken out, I used to start from my tent, pitched on the bank 

 of the river, and take a guide from some healthy village. 

 This man guided me to a hill-top, a mile or two from the 

 infected village, but within sight of it, and pointing out to 

 me the cluster of houses, took his departure. Nothing would 

 have tempted him to go with me to the entrance of the village. 

 On one occasion, my guide pointed out to me a hamlet, named 

 Kherki, where he said all the inhabitants were dead. As I, 

 and the native doctor who was with me, approached nearer 

 the village, we found the village cattle wandering about in 

 the grain fields ; and a poor dog — the only living inhabitant 

 of the village — barked furiously at us, from the top of one of 

 the houses. On reaching the group of houses, and going in, 

 we found all the people lying dead, some on their beds, some 

 on the floors of the rooms. Probably a month had elapsed, 

 and during all that time no one from any neighbouring village 

 had ventured to go within a mile of the plague-stricken place. 

 The native doctor and I drove the cattle and the dog away 

 from the place ; and then, as the best means of disposing of 

 the dead, I set fire to the village, and burned the whole of it 

 down — cottages, cattle-sheds, and barns full of grain. 



On another occasion, about three weeks after, nearly a 

 quarter of a mile from a plague-stricken and deserted house, 

 the native doctor and I found the dead body of a woman. 



