lamas and important men, after being pulverized, are mixed with clay and cast in moulds into miniature chorten. These relic chorten are deposited in sacred places, such as monasteries, temples, caverns, etc. On the seventh day the funeral ceremony, called Ten-zung, is performed. All relations and neighbours are invited to this funeral feast. At dusk all the evil spirits which are believed to have been invited to the departure of the deceased, are expelled by a Tantrik priest, assisted by the deafening yells of the guests.[1]
The physicians of High Asia have, I am told, discovered such remarkable properties of vegetable drugs, and of the flesh and bile of certain animals, and of some sorts of excrements in healing different kinds of sores, that if the statements of my informant be true, the surgeons of civilized countries would be struck with wonder at their marvellous performances. For this remarkable success, the Tibetans do not appear to be indebted to their Chinese or Indian neighbours.[2] Their medicines are mostly indigenous, and their discoveries in surgery have resulted from their own experience. They supply the greater number of physicians and surgeons to the Mongols and other neighbouring peoples.
The treatment of small-pox is very little understood by Tibetan doctors. Inoculation is, however, resorted to, and a new method of performing this operation has been discovered by the Northern Chinese physicians. It consists in selecting the best lymph from the light white pox pustules of a healthy child, which, mixed with camphor powder, is blown with a pipe into the nostril of the person to be inoculated.14 Great care and experience are required in selecting the lymph, on which alone depends the safety of the patients. Chicken-pox occurs only in a mild form, and is generally left to take its course.
Hydrophobia is very prevalent in Tibet, Mongolia, and China, and its effects are considered to manifest themselves, according to the colour of the dog, at periods varying from seven days to eighteen months, and also according to the time of day at which the bite was received. The remedies are, however, sufficiently practical. As soon
- ↑ Waddell, op. cit., 491, calls this sacrifice to the manes of the deceased ting-shag.
- ↑ Our author is not quite right here, as the Tibetans have borrowed the major part of their pharmacopœia from China and India. Most of their medical works are purely Chinese or Indian, and I do not believe they have much more, if even so much, knowledge of surgery as the Chinese, who are terribly ignorant themselves in this art. Tibetan medicines are in high favour among the Chinese and Mongols.—(W. R.)
