wood on a hill can have to do with sin it is harder to
see, except it be regarded as stealing the possessions of the
spiritual lord of the locality. In consulting a doctor, too, a
Mongol seems to lay a deal of stress on the belief that it is his
_fate_ to be cured by the medical man in question, and, if he finds
relief, often says that his meeting this particular doctor and
being cured is the result of prayers made at some previous time.

'One difficulty in curing Mongols is that they frequently, when
supplied with medicines, depart entirely from the doctor's
instructions when they apply them; and a not unfrequent case is
that of the patient who, after applying to the foreigner for
medicine and getting it, is frightened by his success, or scared by
some lying report of his neighbours, or staggered at the fact that
the foreigner would not feel his pulse, or feel it at one wrist
only, lays aside the medicine carefully and does not use it at all.

'In Mongolia, too, a foreigner is often asked to perform absurd,
laughable, or impossible cures. One man wants to be made clever,
another to be made fat, another to be cured of insanity, another of
tobacco, another of whisky, another of hunger, another of tea;
another wants to be made strong, so as to conquer in gymnastic
exercises; most men want medicine to make their beards grow; while
almost every man, woman, and child wants to have his or her skin
made as white as that of the foreigner.

'When a Mongol is convinced that his case is hopeless he takes it
very calmly, and bows to his fate, whether it be death or chronic
disease; and Mongol doctors, and Mongol patients too, after a
succession of failures, regard the affliction as a thing fated, to
be unable to overcome which implies no lack of medical ability on
the doctor's part.

'Of all the healing appliances in the hands of a foreigner none
strikes the fancy of a Mongol so much as the galvanic battery, and
it is rather curious that almost every Mongol who sees it and tries
its effect exclaims what a capital thing it would be for examining
accused persons. It would far surpass whipping, beating, or
suspending. Under its torture a guilty man could not but "confess."
Some one in England has advocated the use of the galvanic battery
in place of the c