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and interesting a field for a rational curiosity to traverse, and in which speculation, combined with industry, may hope to attain to so many interesting conclusions.

To require of Indian chaplains an acquaintance with Sanskrit or Arabic as a qualification would be (as Professor Wilson remarks, in the passage before cited, in regard to the former language) no great hardship when facilities are afforded for their acquisition. Nor, looking to the high talents which have generally distinguished the professors of Bishops' College, Calcutta (among whom may be specified Principal Mill and the learned translator of Hermann's Political Antiquities of Greece), should it be a matter of difficulty to find men possessed of the abilities and attainments which a knowledge of these languages implies, who would be willing to accept the highly honourable appointment of chaplain in the East-Indies. The field before them, as far as regards the native population, is ample and noble; and both deserves and requires the devotion of fine talents, of learning, and of judgment. The office of the Christian ministry can no where be efficiently exercised without these qualifications (superadded to an earnest piety), and least of all in an untried country like India, where a people partly learned and partly ignorant, but as a whole marked by a genius and a moral condition so different from our own, has to be dealt with.*

III. Further Channel for the Propagation of Christianity.

But besides the channel which has been already adverted to for declaring the truths of Christianity to the people of India, there is another remaining to be mentioned. I allude to the Government schools, English and vernacular, in which an attempt should, perhaps, be made to introduce the reading of the Sacred Scriptures. The infidelity which has been often said, and probably with much justice, to characterize many of those youths who have dropped their Pagan creed in consequence of the instruction received at our colleges, is greatly to be deplored, and ought to be counteracted by all prudent means, The attendance of all the pupils at the Government seminaries being perfectly voluntary and unforced, the introduction of the reading of the Scriptures, as here suggested, could not, perhaps, be fairly considered as a compulsory inculcation of Christianity. The offer of the boon of education on the part of Government may be properly accompanied with such conditions as the ruling power in its wisdom may see fit to prescribe; and those who are unwilling to receive secular instruction in combination with the religious knowledge with which the state conjoins it, may be fairly left to seek it elsewhere. But it is scarcely to be supposed that many persons would be deterred from receiving such instruction in the Government seminaries. For, although it cannot be

* Since the above was written, I have seen the following remarks on the utility of Sanskrit to the servants of Government in India, in the Preface to Professor Wilson's Sanskrit Grammar, just published, page xi. :-"It will enable them to understand the people, and to be understood by them. The popular prejudices of the Hindus, their daily observances, their occupations, their amusements, their domestic and social relations, their local legends, their national traditions, their mythological fables, their metaphysical abstractions, their religious worship, all spring from, and are perpetuated by, the Sanskrit language. To know a people, these things must be known. Without such knowledge, revenue may be raised, justice may be administered, the outward shows and forms of orderly government may be maintained; but no influence with the people will be enjoyed, no claim to their confidence or attachment will be established, no affection will be either felt or inspired, and neither the disposition nor the ability to work any great or permanent improvement in the feelings, opinions, or practices of the country will be attained. It fortunately happens, it is true, that much of this indispensable information may now be acquired through the English language, in consequence of the valuable translations and dissertations of various of the Company's most distinguished servants: but knowledge from the fountain-head is more precise and effective than when gleaned from subordinate and not always pure or profound rivulets; and in proportion as it is effective and precise will be the respect and trust of the native population, the influence and power of their English masters."

denied that most Hindu parents would prefer to send their children to schools where secular knowledge alone is communicated, still the large numbers who (from being unable to obtain admittance into the Government schools, or other causes) flock to the missionary schools in Calcutta and elsewhere, in which Christianity is strenuously inculcated, prove that, after all, this species of instruction is by no means so much dreaded as might have been imagined.

If the introduction of the Christian Scriptures into the Government schools be thought too bold and dangerous a measure, an attempt ought, at least, to be made, by making natural theology a prominent part of the course, to impress the minds of the pupils with a sense of their relation to their Almighty Maker, Preserver, and Righteous Governor, and thus to furnish them with a most needful check, and with a guide to lead them onward to Christianity. And in order to open their minds to the real character of their own religions, they ought to be furnished with fuller means of information than have yet been placed within their reach. With this view, such works as Professor Wilson's translations of the Vishnu Purana, and the Sankhya Karika, and Sale's Koran, should form portions of every school library.

A CIVILIAN.

October 28th, 1841 .

VERSES BY AUHAD UD DIN (OF GANJAH).

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DIARY OF AN ASSISTANT SURGEON.

No. VI.

CIRCUMSTANCES have occurred which induce me to conclude that, in the treatment of cases, we do not sufficiently incline to the voice of nature. I do not mean to say that the cravings of a disordered desire in sickness are to be indiscriminately gratified, but the voice of instinct is oftentimes the decision for life or death. Two or three cases will best illustrate my meaning.

Capt. P. was taken ill with jungle-fever; he suffered under the usual symptoms, and endured the usual treatment, but the disease ran to its usual crisis of great bodily prostration, with mental aberration and excited delirium. In this state he lay for nearly two days, in a sort of waking dream, continually complaining of great thirst, and importunately entreating the attendants to allow him a bottle of claret to quench his thirst. This circumstance was mentioned to the medical man, who decidedly forbade the indulgence of such a request. The person in attendance on the captain, in the evening of the second day of his hopeless condition, was an Irish corporal; unable to resist the desperate entreaties of the moribund captain, whose incessant cry was for some claret to quench his raging thirst, and thinking that a dying man would not be kilt the sooner by having his dying wish and supplication gratified, Pat Madigan possessed himself of a bottle of claret, which he poured into a large tumbler and gave to the patient, who drank it off at a draught. In a short time, P. fell fast asleep; his skin broke into a profuse perspiration; he awoke with a mens sana, and in a fortnight's time he had once more the corpus

sanum.

Lieut. H. had suffered for the space of three weeks from very severe dysentery; he became very much reduced in flesh, and exceedingly weak. The medical attendant very properly enjoined a rigid attention to diet, and, among other articles as improper to be taken, prohibited milk. By some morbid perversity of appetite, it so happened that milk was the very thing which, of all others, H. most craved. I must say, that I think medical men too often capriciously oppose the hankerings of their patients; if there is nothing in the thing craved mechanically or physically injurious to the disease itself, as stimulants to an inflammatory diathesis; or chemically opposed to the remedies in use, as acids to mercurials, I can see no reasonable ground for refusing to allow not unreasonable but earnest and supplicatory desires of patients. In this case, there seems to have been really no fair reason for refusing the milk: it so happened, however, that circumstances required the temporary absence of the medical man, and no sooner was his back turned for three or four days, than H., determined no longer to be tortured with an ungratified appetite, desired his servant to go into the neighbourhood to a milk-man, and bring him back a pint of new milk; the order was complied with, and the "forbidden potion" repeated two or three times each day, during the doctor's absence. The result was, that H. rapidly recovered, having rallied from the first draught of milk.

A third remarkable case occurred in the person of a very near relative of mine. Being quartered with his regiment in Martinique, he was siezed with an attack of yellow fever; the disease ran its usual course, terminating in the black vomit, which is generally considered a fatal indication. Owing to the pressure of troops in the barracks, Major P. had swung a hammock in a small spare room, in which there was an open locker, containing his stores; among

other things, some bottles of Madeira. The major was suffering under that wandering dreamy sort of delirium, which always marks the termination of febrile attacks; as a precautionary measure, he was constantly watched by two orderlies. The regimental surgeon and the staff surgeon called late in the evening which, after a little consultation, they agreed should be his last. The patient, by no means unconscious of what was said, heard unmoved the fatal decree: the hour and approach of death, when he seems to stand face to face with his victim, is the time in which his coming causes least dismay. In the course of the night, both orderlies fell asleep, and the major, in his sleep-awake delirium, stole quietly out of his hammock, and went to the locker, where the first thing he put his emaciated hand upon was a decanter of madeira; he emptied the decanter at one pull, and had just re-placed it back in the locker, when one of the orderlies, awaking, perceived his charge standing where he little expected to see him, in his night-shirt: he immediately roused his companion, and the two proceeded forthwith to force the sick man back to his cot. Unconscious of what he and they were doing, and excited by the wine, the former very powerfully resisted the attempt for some time; they however at length succeeded in getting him to bed again, where, exhausted by exertion, he fell fast asleep; a profuse perspiration broke out; by morning the disease had taken a favourable turn, and in due course the patient recovered. He still lives to joke at the fastidious prohibitions of "the doctors," for, during the crisis of his attack, he had earnestly entreated to be allowed some madeira, which had been rigidly refused.

I have never been able to bring myself to believe that, taking all things into consideration, and under a due comparison of circumstances, India has for its inhabitants a more unfavourable climate than that of England for its inhabitants; certainly, when Britain was subject to visitations of small-pox and plague, and before the appearance of cholera in India, the preference of climate would, to me at least, be in favour of the latter. I have sometimes questioned if, under certain circumstances, the climate of India is not more beneficial, or at least less injurious, to English constitutions, than that of England itself. A great number of young men, varying in age from seventeen to twenty, arrive in India annually; at the end of twenty years, upon an average, a tenth of the number who arrived in any given year will be alive in the country—that is, twenty out of two hundred-and statistical returns will shew this not to be too favourable an estimate. But it must not be supposed that all the other great portion of one hundred and eighty have fallen victims to the climate. Some will have perished by casualties-as duels, accidents, engagements; some will have been dismissed the service; some will have thrown up their commissions; many will have destroyed themselves by intemperance and "riotous living;" and many will have retired from the service. Any one class of the community in India may serve as an example of the whole, and the medical department cannot be considered as a too favourable one. In the year 1830, the number of assistant surgeons on the Madras establishment amounted to 147; of this number, in 1840, will be found on the list of the medical department the names of eighty-three of the same individuals; leaving sixty-four casualties, or about six and a-half per annum. But of these sixty-four, fourteen retired on the pension list supposing, therefore, that the whole remaining fifty died in India, it will shew an amount of deaths at five per annum, or on 147 persons barely three per cent. There is nothing locally or officially peculiar in the position of assistant surgeons which can render them a too favoured body to

constitute an example; on the contrary, they are, more than any other part of the service, exposed to the influence of contagion, to the risk attendant upon anatomical investigations, the anxieties and harassings of long and sickly marches in charge of regiments, and to sudden movements from place to place at all seasons. They have, however, this advantage over other junior branches of the service-viz. they do not enter it quite so green and inexperienced as cadets; and their education having been more extended and matured than that of mere boys, they find, both professionally and generally, sufficient, and indeed necessary, occupation for the mind, so that they do not fall into those smoking, brandy-paunee habits, which, gradually stealing an increasing influence over the victim, ends in his destruction.

The parties that for the most part fall victims to the climate, as it is generally said, are the private soldiery, and young officers in the first four or five years of their service; but at least seven out of every ten of these ought to be classified as falling "victims to their own imprudence." Drunkenness is the great instrument with which death does his work in India; to the privates, that accursed thing the canteen is as a burning fiery furnace, and smoking is too often the torch which kindles the flame. Ex uno disce omnes. Ensign Hobson lands in Madras on the 1st of January, 1830, having left school just twelve months, and being eighteen next birth-day. After having remained upon his good behaviour and almost in statu pupillari at the cadets' quarters for three weeks, he is sent up to one of the nearest stations, to do duty with a regiment for six or eight months, pending his final posting to a regiment. Arrived at Palaveram, Poonamallee, Vellore, or Cuddapah, perhaps, Ensign Hobson finds himself in possession of three or four things, of which he has hitherto only had dreams or visions; a horse, a gun, military liberty, and his own free inclination. With the first, Mr. Hobson amuses himself by riding about the cantonment in the blazing heat and sunshine of the day, and going, like the Athenians of old, from house to house, but chiefly ranging among sundry other subs alike experienced and thoughtful with himself. I know not how it is, but all griffins seem to take intuitively and instinctively to smoking, and so, when Hobson has dismounted, and ran into Dobson's back verandah, there he finds the latter and Jobson, each with a cheroot in his mouth, and sitting in a canebottom arm chair, with their legs on a table, or their feet stuck up against a pillar or a balustrade on the verandah. Now Dobson and Jobson probably chum together, and therefore their company and conversation, though very friendly, may be somewhat stale to each other; the arrival, therefore, of Hobson, at twelve o'clock in the day, precisely when every thing external seems utterly torpified, is a perfect treat, and before Hobson can give utterance to the griffin's eternal mid-day salutation to his comrade, "Curse that infernal drill," his mouth is stopped by a long Trichinopoly cheroot. There is a common saying, that two are better company than three; in some cases it may be so, as in love and courtship, in petty larceny and felony, in partridge-shooting and chess-playing, in pedestrian excursions and double-bedded rooms; it is not so, however, with griffins. Now the two chums have found it hot sitting still, the new-comer has found it hot riding across, all three soon find it hot talking, and dry work smoking; therefore the cry is very soon, what may be called a griffin's first accents, " Boy, brandy-paunee laō!" Roused by the summons, up jumps the half-awakened "boy," and comes hastily into the presence of his half-dressed master. To the order, the reply is, perhaps, "Master no brandy got-gentle'ms drink him all, pinish him last night." Dobson will order his "boy" immediately to run to the mess-writer for a

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