seriously compromise any favorable tendencies, and the directions given by the physician are usually subject to any amendments that may be suggested by the inclinations of the patient or the opinions of nurses or friends. If supposed to be seriously ill, the patient is visited by a throng of relatives, friends and acquaintances, and is disturbed by a ceaseless hum of voices; elderly ladies entertain one another at the bed-*side of the patient with the fullest accounts of the nature, course, duration and proper treatment of similar cases which they have witnessed, some of them relating the circumstances of the marvelous cures effected by some skillful doctor while others dwell upon the melancholy import of the symptoms.
Having concluded his daily routine of dispensary work, the foreign doctor makes his second visit to his patient. Arrived at the house, he probably finds it filled with the relatives and friends of the patient, all devoutly attending a reading from the Buddhist scriptures by a priest or a number of priests, according to the means of the patient; long prayers and chants are rehearsed, sacred water is sprinkled over the patient, offerings of flowers and wax tapers are made to the household spirits. After this ceremony, which lasts for several hours, the patient passes into the hands of a native doctor.
