long by three wide, from eight to ten inches deep, filled with clay, on the top of which the wood is piled and kept burning for the time required. The bench on which the woman lies is of the same height and is brought into immediate contact with it. No one knows the origin of this most pernicious custom, cruel in the extreme, but it is practiced by a number of the East Indian nations. Every effort has been made by the foreign physicians to abolish this practice, but so far without any signal success. In a few instances the wives of His Majesty and of some of the princes have dispensed with this barbarous custom, but the old midwives continue to have their way and the poor mothers are still systematically roasted.
The Siamese are rapidly advancing in their knowledge of anatomy. A few years since they absolutely knew little concerning the human frame; they had a vague knowledge of a few of the bones and tendons, but knew nothing in regard to the nerves, having no word to designate them. Concerning the arterial circulation they had the most novel ideas, imagining the pulse to be a conductor of wind. Ask a native when feeling his pulse what causes it to beat. As in other cases, he will reply "pen lom," it is wind. They formerly imagined that the chest and abdomen were one, which they termed bowels; that the passages to the lungs and stomach were one and that the heart could be reached through the esophagus. A foreign doctor had been called in to treat one of the princes who was suffering with palpitation of the heart. Ten royal physicians were in attendance, who had been physicing him on the supposition that there was a direct passage from the mouth to the heart, hence they
