Geography of the Himalayah Mountains. 25 



mencing heats, and until the rainy season begins, with their 

 heads under little rills of the coldest water, directed upon 

 them for some hours during the hottest part of the day. 

 Here it was practised in the case of a life no less precious 

 than that of the young Rajah of Sirmoor, a boy about ]0 

 or 12 years of age, — a sufficient evidence of the estimation 

 in which the practice is held. It is most commonly, how- 

 ever, followed in the case of infants at the breast. The tem- 

 perature of the water I have observed to be from 46° to 5G° 

 and 65°, and have only to add, that it seemed to me most 

 common in those districts which, having a good deal of cold 

 weather, are nevertheless subject to very considerable sum- 

 mer heats. It was a great preservative, the people affirmed, 

 against bilious fever, and affections of the spleen, during the 

 subsequent rainy months. Does it act in this way — (for 

 of the fact of its utility I have no doubt) from the sym- 

 pathy subsisting between the brain and the hepatic system ? 

 and if so, may we not expect to derive some advantage from 

 its adoption in the medical practice of the plains, particular- 

 ly among European children who suffer so much from these 

 diseases ? The want of the facilities enjoyed in the hills for 

 its application, seems to be the chief objection. Might it 

 not even be sometimes practised as a preventive in the case 

 of adults? The violent attacks of congestive fever with 

 hepatic affection which result to newly arrived Europeans, 

 from exposure of the head to the direct rays of the sun, 

 seem to complete the evidence respecting the mode of its 

 operation, by pointing out the consequences of a converse 

 mode of treatment. * Hitherto the agriculture and native ve- 

 getable productions have differed but little from those of the 

 northern part of the plains of Hindostan — when we descend 

 the north-east face of the Nahn range, to ascend the Jeituk 



• Hence perhaps one of the advantages in resisting the daily influence of cli- 

 mate tending to the production of chronic disease, enjoyed by the native over the 

 European inhabitant of Hindostan. The turbaned and shaven head of the latter 

 admitting of the ready and frequent access of cold water, forms a part of Eastern cos- 

 tume too widely extended, and immemorially used, among the most civilized inha- 

 bitants of the tropics, (whose fashions are neither adopted, nor pass away arbitra- 

 rily, as ours do,) to have been originally adopted without reason, or perhaps now 

 neglected with impunity by us, when residing permanently among them. 



