o
for them; and if he had any fair prospect of being able to restore
these people to the use of their limbs, that measures might be
adopted through the civil authorities to provide them with
accommodation and the means of subsistence, either by private
subscription, or by application to Government. The civil authorities,
however, could find neither accommodation nor funds to maintain these
people while under Dr. Foley's care; and several seasons of calamity
had deprived them of the means of maintaining themselves at a
distance from their families. Nor is a medical man in India provided
with the means found most effectual in removing such affections, such
as baths, galvanic batteries, &c. It is lamentable to think how very
little we have as yet done for the country in the healing art, that
art which, above all others, a benevolent and enlightened Government
should encourage among the people of India.

All we have as yet done has been to provide medical attendants for
our European officers; regiments, and jails. It must not, however, be
supposed that the people of India are without medical advice, for
there is not a town or considerable village in India without its
practitioners, the Hindoos following the Egyptian (Misrani), and the
Musalmans the Grecian (Yunani) practice. The first prescribe little
physic and much fasting; and the second follow the good old rules of
Hippocrates, Galen, and Avicenna, with which they are all tolerably
well acquainted. As far as the office of physician goes, the natives
of India of all classes, high and low, have much more confidence in
their own practitioners than in ours, whom they consider too reckless
and better adapted to treat diseases in a cold than a hot climate.
They cannot afford to give the only fees which European physicians
would accept; and they see them, in their hospital practice, trust
much to their native assistants, who are very few of them able to
read any book, much less to study the profound doctrines of the great
masters of the science of medicine.[12] No native ventures to offer
an opinion upon this abstruse subject in any circle where he is not
known to be profoundly read in either Arabic or Sanskrit lore; nor
would he venture to give a prescription without first consulting,
'spectacles on nose', a book as large as a church Bible. The educated
class, as indeed all classes, say that they do not want our
physicians, but stand much in need of our surgeons. Here they f