NATIVE TREATMENT OF DISEASES IN INDIA.
A correspondent thus writes: Regarding the native treatment of diseases, one of the most curious things I ever witnessed was a half-clad native shouting through the streets of a country town: ‘Does any one want back his sight?—one rupee only!’ as if he were hawking fruits or sweetmeats; and, to my astonishment, a patient soon presented himself to be operated on for cataract. There and then standing in the bazaar, the itinerant oculist took out his penknife and performed the operation in a few minutes, bound up the man’s eyes, and telling him to keep in the dark for a fortnight, received his fee of one rupee, and shouted his war-cry for more patients. The operation was almost unvaryingly successful; one instance among my servants being a woman of eighty, who had charge of my fowl-house, and had for many a day been sightless, except to distinguish light from darkness, and who in this way was successfully operated upon. Besides this operator are bone-setters, and medical rubbers male and female, especially represented by the hereditary low-caste accoucheuse of each village, whose skill in shampooing is such an aid in her lowly calling—as the natives regard it—as to supplant much of the useless medicine and enforced rest of more civilised countries, and save endless mischief and suffering to her sex. What skill they have is of course almost purely traditional. None of the science of the world or British usage has yet altered in the slightest degree either the customs of the native or his horror at the idea of male physicians for women—especially in certain ailments—and their wonder at our obtuseness and disregard of propriety on so delicate a point. To supply a vacancy so long unfilled, lady-doctors have now appeared on the scene, who, it is hoped by reaching the zenanas, may reach the real source through which a higher enlightenment in India is possible. An immense field is open to them along with every encouragement; and were but some of the many young ladies at home who are straining health for a future pittance in one or other of the spheres of teaching, to turn their attention in this direction, they would find an opening of wider and greater utility before them, and a prospect of large and rapid emolument.