8 



ON HYGIENE IN 



to serve as boundary -marks. The people paid their taxes in 

 kind. As charitable works they constructed tanks, ghats, and 

 rest-houses for travellers, and feeding the poor and afflicted. 



3. Topography and Climate. — Many allusions occur in the 

 history of ancient Hindu medicine to the influence of locality 

 and climate, as also the manners and customs of peoples, on 

 disease, and to the consequent necessity on the part of an 

 accomplished physician to study their influence on the spot,— 

 in other words, to travel. Char aha thus writes on the subject 

 of climate and locality : " The moist country Anitpa is inter- 

 sected by rivers ; the air is cool ; lilies and other water-flowers 

 abound ; geese, ducks, cranes, fish, and serpents are numer- 

 ous." In such a situation the inhabitants are unhealthy and 

 short-lived ; " the juices of the body require to be dried by 

 the use of hot> dry, and light food in small quantities so as to 

 strengthen the internal fire." Such a locality would now 

 be said to be swampy and malarious, the inhabitants affected 

 with malarial cachexy. 



The second kind of country described is the hilly or jan~ 

 gala, characterised by arid plains on which dwarf trees and 

 prickly shrubs grow sparsely ; the heat of the air is great and 

 hot winds prevail. In such a country there is little water 

 upon the surface, and wells have to be dug. The diseases of 

 " air and bile," that is intestinal and hepatic, are most 

 frequent, but the climate is healthy and the inhabitants are 

 longlived. It is remarked that " when a person is born in a 

 particular climate and has air, bile, and phlegm deranged," 

 these affections will be aggravated if he go to a worse one, 

 but, "if he journeys to another and better climate," the 

 tendency to disease will be removed, showing clearly that 

 the effect of change of climate was then understood and appre- 

 ciated. It is further added that, when the above enumerated 

 climates are found in the same country, the general climate 

 of that country is described as mixed. 



