AmMl?ch.f9of.rm*}    Ancient  and  Modem  Hindu  Medicine.  131 
been  averted.  The  offering  may  be  a  beautiful  little  daughter 
who  will  be  married  to  one  of  the  temple  gods  and  brought  up  to  a 
life  of  shame.  One  lady  in  South  India  has  devoted  her  life  to  the 
rescue  of  these  little  temple  girls.  The  cholera  and  small-pox  god- 
desses are  held  in  great  esteem  by  the  masses.  During  the  cholera 
epidemic,  in  1906,  a  great  sacrifice  was  made  in  Guntur  to  the  god- 
dess, and  at  such  a  time  buffaloes,  goats,  and  chickens  are  offered. 
In  addition  to  these  irregular  methods  of  treatment,  there  is  what 
may  be  called  the  regular  school  of  Hindu  medicine,  to  which  a  small 
class  of  native  doctors  belong.  I  have  frequently  met  some  of  these 
men  in  the  homes  of  the  people,  and  not  infrequently  they  are  in 
attendance  upon  the  patient  at  the  same  time  as  myself.  These 
men  are  not  averse  to  being  interrogated  as  to  their  training,  meth- 
ods of  treatment,  etc.  They  have  acquired  their  knowledge  from 
their  fathers  and  grandfathers,  and  from  books  handed  down  in  the 
family.  These  books  have  been  written  in  modern  times,  but  are 
based  upon  those  of  the  ancients,  Charaka,  Susruta  and  others,  but 
are  greatly  inferior  to  them.  The  practice  of  the  regular  Hindu 
physicians  of  to-day  is  based  upon  a  false  knowledge  of  anatomy  and 
physiology,  and  upon  erroneous  theories  as  to  the  cause  and  nature 
of  disease.  They  have  never  dissected,  have  never  seen  the  inside 
of  the  human  body,  have  no  knowledge  of  the  clinical  thermom- 
eter, the  stethoscope,  the  microscope,  etc.,  have  attended  no  medi- 
cal schools,  read  no  medical  journals,  and  belong  to  no  medical 
society.  For  them  the  human  body  is  composed  of  306  bones,  210 
joints,  900  ligaments,  700  vessels,  etc. 
In  the  diagnosis  of  disease  great  stress  is  laid  upon  the  pulse, 
which  in  the  male  must  be  felt  in  the  right  wrist,  in  the  female 
in  the  left.  Many  explanations  are  given  for  this,  one  being  that 
the  blood-vessels  are  differently  distributed  in  the  two  sexes.  The 
character  of  the  pulse  is  largely  depended  upon  for  determining  the 
predominance  of  one  or  other  of  the  three  humors  of  the  body.  If 
the  pulse  feels  like  the  creeping  of  a  serpent  or  a  leech,  wind  is 
predominant,  if  it  be  jumping  like  a  frog,  or  similar  to  the  flight  of  a 
crow,  bile  predominates.  When  it  strikes  the  finger  slowly  and  re- 
sembles the  strutting  of  a  peacock  it  shows  that  the  phlegm  is  in 
excess.  As  the  health  of  the  individual  depends  upon  the  proper 
relation  of  these  three  humors,  disease  is  the  result  of  a  want  of 
correlation,  and  the  treatment  of  disease  consists  in  the  restoration 
