it as an art according to a prescribed routine, and it may well be
supposed that many, especially of the uneducated class, are
nothing but quacks. Still as a class they rank higher both in
general estimation and in usefulness than the village doctors. Of
these there are not fewer than 205 in Nattore. They have not the
least semblance of medical knowledge, and they in general limit
their prescriptions to the simplest vegetable preparations, either
preceded or followed by the pronouncing of an incantation and
by striking and blowing upon the body. Their number proves
that they are in repute in the villages; and the fact is ascribable
to the influence which they exercise upon the minds of the
superstitious by their incantations. The village doctors are both
men and women; and most of them are Mahomedans, like the
class to which they principally address themselves.
The smallpox inoculators in point of information and
respectability come next to the class of general practitioners.
There are 21 of them in Nattore, for the most part Brahmans,
but uninstructed and ignorant, exercising merely the manual art
of inoculation. One man sometimes inoculates from 100 to 500
children in a day, receiving for each operation a fixed rate of
payment varying from one to two annas; the less amount if the
number of children is great, the greater amount if the number is
small. The cow-pox has not, I believe, been introduced into this
district amongst the natives, except at the head station.
Elsewhere the smallpox inoculators have been found its
opponents, but, as far as I can understand, their opposition does
not arise from interested motives, for the cow-pox inoculation
would give them as much labour and profit as they now have.
Their opposition arises, I am assured, from the prejudice against
using cow-pox. The veneration in which the cow is held is well-
known, and they fear to participate in a practice which seems to
be founded on some injury done to that animal when the matter
was originally extracted. The spread of the cow-pox would
probably be most effectually accomplished by the employment of
Mussalman inoculators whose success might in due time
convince the Brahman inoculators of their mistake.
Midwives are another class of practitioners that may be
noticed, although it has been denied that Hindus have any. An
eminent London physician, in his examination before the
Medical Committee of the House of Commons, is stated to have
affirmed that the inhabitants of China have no women-midwives,
and no practitioners in midwifery at all. ‘Of course,’ it is added,
‘the African nations and the Hindus are the same.’ I enquired