444 ISLAND OF COS. 
CHAP, to the donors, is still common in many countries, 
i ' ■ particularly where the Greek and the Catholic 
religion is professed : in the same manner, 
models in wax, or sculptured representations of 
parts of the human body, such as the hands or 
the feet, recovered from disease, are often placed 
before an image, in small shrines near to the 
road side, in the defiles of mountains, particu- 
larly in the ^/ps. The most curious fact con- 
nected with the practice is this, that it is 
much older than the time of Hippocrates \ Such 
offerings have been made from time immemorial 
by the Hindoos ^ : but among the Greeks, it was 
customary to devote within their temples some- 
thing more than the mere symbol of a benefit 
received ; inscriptions were added to such signs, 
setting forth the nature of the remedy that had 
been successful, or giving a description of the 
peculiar grace that had been accorded\ In the 
(1) It was also a custom among the Romans, as we learn from 
Tihvllus: 
O Dea, nunc succurre milii; nam posse metlcri 
Picta docet templis multa tabellatuis." 
T, hull. Elf g. iii. III. 1. 
(2) The women, in many parts of India, hang out dfierings to their 
Deities; either a string of beads, or a lock of liair, or some other 
trifling present, when a child, or any one of their family, has been 
recovered from illness. 
(3) "Among the remains of antiquity which offer themselves to the 
notice 
