186 On the Boksas of Bijnonr. [No. 3, 



that his admonitions do no good, while the Boksas standing round 

 half-laughing denied the charge of drinking more than is good for 

 them. They affirm that the spirits help, with githi and flesh to save 

 them from spleen and Imdi. 



I now come to what is practically perhaps the most in- 

 teresting question connected with the Boksas, viz., their general 

 state of health and the diseases to which they are liable. And, in 

 palliation of the meagreness of what I have been able to discover under 

 this head, it must be remembered that, among savages like these, each 

 little fact must be expiscated separately, and the information derived 

 from one man checked by repeated cross-questioning of him and 

 others. 



It may be premised that inoculation is quite unknown among 

 them, and all denied that they use any medicinal substance whatever. 

 As one man put it " What medicine do we know except Bhagioan 

 U nam?" 



The only diseases unconnected with malaria regarding which parti- 

 cular inquiries were made, were urinary calculus, leprosy, cholera and 

 small-pox. Cases of the two first have occurred among the Boksas, but 

 t he aggregate number of the tribe is so small, that no generalization of 

 ■value could be made as to the rareness or frequency of these diseases 

 among them, as compared with the inhabitants of the district generally. 



Only one epidemic of cholera was mentioned to me. This occurred 

 in ls02, and carried off nineteen people out of one middle-sized 

 village. One sporadic case appeared in another village apparently 

 about the same time. 



The people were able to furnish some particulars of epidemic small- 

 pox in five different villages, four of them apparently in the same 

 year. The details indicate very varying intensity, as in two of the 

 epidemics, although a good many children had the disease, no deaths 

 occurred, while in each of the other three, ten to twenty, mostly young 

 pi rsons, died. 



Ordinary intermittent fever is not unknown amongst the Boksas, 

 but it is by no means common, and a number of those examined had 

 had no attack for many years. Deaths occasionally occur from a form 

 of fever which seems from their description to be a typhus with 

 bilious complication, and which proves fatal in five or six days, if at all. 



