No. 57.— 1906.] 



PROCEEDINGS. 



31 



agency of our waterfalls and rivers. Meantime a new era for our 

 roads has set in with the development of motor cars and cycles. 



Before closing the record as to new intellectual developments 

 in the Island, mention may be made of several series of public and 

 popular lectures organized in connection with different institutions 

 or through private enterprises in many of our towns. Foremost 

 among these were the Colombo Pettah Library series, and also the 

 popular series arranged in Kandy by Miss Gibbon. Other series 

 are found in Colombo, Kurunegala, Galle, and sometimes Jaffna, 

 in connection with Guilds, Young Men's Associations, &c, and 

 very lately the accomplished Registrar-General made a new 

 departure in the direction of popular lectures, inaugurating the 

 same in a highly interesting historical sketch, in introducing 

 which, however, he made one rather rash statement, which it is my 

 duty as your President to notice and refute. " He spoke of your 

 Society as *« almost dying of starvation " for want of Papers. 

 I think before I am done, you all (including our worthy friend 



or mice (vi., 11, 16), or from the wound caused by a poisoned arrow 

 (v., 24)]. 



If the chief causes of malarial fever are " impure air and water and 

 the existence of mosquitoes, according to ancient authorities on Ayur- 

 vedic medicine," we should be led to expect some statements to that 

 effect in Susruta's chapter on fever, the king of diseases (roganikarat), 

 where he goes very thoroughly into the causes of fever, such as derange- 

 ment of the humours by some disturbing cause, as fighting with a strong 

 man, anger, or sleeping in the daytime, by improper application of 

 medicines, external injuries caused by a weapon or other instrument, 

 by some disease, by fatigue or exhaustion, by indigestion, by poison. 

 &c. Poison (visam) is the only term in this list which could be supposed 

 to have any reference to mosquito bites ; but the symptoms attributed 

 to the fever caused by poison, such as diarrhoea, prove that vegetable 

 poison must be meant, and this is expressly stated in a Sanskrit 

 Commentary. Susruta does not refer to mosquito bites anywhere else 

 than in the book on Poisons ( Kalpasth anam ) , where he notices them 

 very briefly, together with the stings of other insects. Poisonous 

 spiders, e.g., are far more copiously discussed by Susruta than mos- 

 quitoes, and he attributes to them the causation of dangerous diseases, 

 as well as of fever and other complications. Susruta's general notions 

 of the nature of poisonous substances, including the nails and teeth of 

 cats, dogs, monkeys, alligators, &c, are very crude, and his statements 

 regarding animal poison in particular seem to be based, in a great mea- 

 sure, on an observation of the effects of snake-bites. Thus, he supposes 

 insects (kita) and scorpions to be generated in the putrid carcases, 

 excrements, and eggs of snakes ; and he places the bites of dangerous 

 animals of this kind on a par with snake-bites as to their consequences 

 and as to their medical treatment. It does not seem advisable, there- 

 fore, to compare Susruta's remark on the fatal nature of the bites of 

 a certain Masaka's occurring in mountainous regions with modern 

 theories of the origin of malaria, especially as Masaka is a very wide 

 term, which may include any fly or insect that bites, besides ordinary 

 mosquitoes, as in a well-known text of the Code of Manu (I., 40) on 

 the creation of " all stinging and biting insects " (sarvam ca damsa- 

 masakam). The other Sanskrit authorities agree with Susruta. 



Wurzburg, 21st November, 1905. 



J. JOIXY. 



