We must, however, do the natives the justice to allow, that the refrigerating principle lately adopted by some of our leading physicians, owes its origin solely to the ancient practice of the _Brahmans_, or Hindu priests; of whom the generality affect to be deeply versed in pharmacy. I believe, that, if taken in time, few fevers would be found to degenerate into _typhus_, and that very seldom any determination towards the liver from acute cases would occur, were the refrigerating course to be adopted. Often have I known my servants, when attacked with fever, to drink cold water in abundance, and to apply wet cloths to their heads, with great success; the former has generally lowered the pulse considerably, by throwing out a strong perspiration, while the latter has given immediate local relief.
Were it not that _cast_ (_i.e._ sect) opposes a formidable barrier to the more extensive practice of European physicians among the natives in general, the native doctors would speedily be consigned to their merited contempt: but such are the prejudices arising from religious tenets, among the Hindus in particular, that, even when at the last extremity, many would rather die than suffer any medicine prepared, or perhaps of which the liquid part had been barely touched, by one not of their own _cast_, to enter their mouths! Where such infatuation prevails, ignorance will maintain her empire, until, by the gradual abolition of vulgar errors, the light of science, and of reason, may begin to glimmer among the people at large. It will not suffice, that a few skilful European professors should be seen, and be admired, by a grateful few: that has already happened; but the dread of religious anathema, and of domestic excommunication, are too forcibly opposed to such weak demonstrations. Unhappily, we aimed at a reform, in this particular, at that very point to which it should have had only a remote tendency: we peremptorily attacked the very existence of full a tenth of the whole population, that is, of the Brahmans, or Hindu priests; and we excited, among the people at large, suspicions such as have given scope to our enemies for inculcating, that we are intent on subjecting their minds, as well as their bodies.