96 IDOLATROUS PRACTICES. [1844. 



temples, in many instances, were adorned with moral 

 maxims, and sometimes with an image of the god of 

 China, and, on one occasion, I made a copy of a very 

 gorgeous painting of some hideous deity, between a man 

 and a bull. This ox-god of the Me'ia-co-shimahs cannot 

 fail to bring to the recollection of many of my readers the 

 celebrated Apis of the Egyptians, the most important of 

 those deities which spring out of the fetish-worship, that 

 so peculiarly distinguished the religious system of those 

 remarkable people. The outline of this painting is gold, 

 and the horns are yellow. Herodotus has recorded the 

 existence of a sacred heifer-mummy, cased in gold ; and 

 the golden calf, which seduced the Israelites from their 

 allegiance to the God of their fathers, is an off-shoot from 

 the same superstition. 



" Of the diseases noticed, the most prominent were 

 those arising chiefly from personal neglect. Of these, 

 opthalmia, in rather a severe form, attacks the eyes, 

 frequently producing total loss of vision ; many of them, 

 moreover, are blear-eyed, from the tarsi being the part 

 affected. From the same cause, exanthematous erup- 

 tions, particularly scabies, psoriasis, acne, impetigo, and 

 lepra, attack their surface; whilst a species of large 

 plague boil sometimes breaks out in the neck, groin, 

 and axilla, leaving very troublesome ulcers. Elephan- 

 tiasis, in its several stages, is frequently developed. 

 In the wintry months they suffer from influenza and 

 catarrhal affections, and during the summer the small 

 pox occasionally commits terrible ravages. Very few cases 

 of malformation came under my notice, and still fewer 

 of any congenital deformity of the limbs; in one case 



