552 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 178Q. 



method of treating diseases of the liver and other viscera; this is probably the 

 cause of the most obstinate and fatal disease to be met with in the country, I 

 mean the dropsy. As the Rajah had ever been desirous of my aid and advice, 

 and had directed his doctors to attend to my private instructions and practice, I 

 endeavoured to introduce a more judicious method of treating those diseases by 

 mercurial preparations. I had an opportunity of proving the advantage of this 

 plan to their conviction in several instances, and of seeing them initiated in the 

 practice. 



The Rajah favoured me with above 70 specimens of the medicines in use with 

 them. They have many sorts of stones and petrifactions saponaceous to the 

 touch, which are employed as an external application in swellings and pains of the 

 joints. They often remove such complaints, and violent head-achs, by fumi- 

 gating the part affected with aromatic plants and flowers. They do not seek for 

 any other means of information respecting the state of a patient than that of 

 feeling the pulse; and they confidently say, that the seat of pain and disease ig 

 easily to be discovered, not so much from the frequency of the pulse as its vibra- 

 tory motion. They feel the pulse at the wrist with their three fore-fingers, first 

 of the right, and then of the left hand ; after pressing more or less on the artery, 

 and occasionally removing 1 or 2 of the fingers, they determine what the disease 

 is. They do not eat any thing the day on which they take physic, but endea- 

 vour to make up the loss afterwards by eating more freely than before, and using 

 such medicines as they think will occasion costiveness. 



The many simples in use with them are from the vegetable kingdom, collected 

 chiefly in Boutan. They are in general inoffensive and very mild in their opera- 

 tion. Carminatives and aromatics are given in coughs, colds, and affections of 

 the breast. The centaury, coriander, carraway, and cinnamon, are of this sort. 

 This last is with them the bark of the root of that species of laurus formerly 

 mentioned as a native of this country. The bark from the root is in this plant 

 the only part which partakes of the cinnamon taste; and I doubt very much if it 

 could be distinguished by the best judges from what we call the true cinnamon. 

 The bark, leaves, berries, and stalks, of many shrubs and trees, are in use with 

 them, all in decoction. Some have much of the astringent bitter taste of our 

 most valuable medicines, and are generally employed here with the same view, 

 to strengthen the powers of digestion, and mend the general habit. Their prin- 

 cipal purgative medicines are brought by the Chinese to Lassa. They had not 

 any medicine that operated as a vomit, till I gave the Rajah some ipecacuanha, 

 who made the first experiment with it on himself. In bleeding they have a great 

 opinion of drawing the blood from a particular part. For head-achs they bleed 

 in the neck; for pains in the arm and shoulder, in the cephalic vein; and of the 

 breast or side, in the median ; and if in the belly, they bleed in the basilic vein. 



