rney through the
heat down to our hospital in Bannu, you can usually anticipate the
character of the case by seeing the men who have carried the bed in
carefully winding their pagaris round their noses and mouths before
proceeding to unbandage it for your inspection, and when it is at
last opened all except the doctor and his assistant try to get as far
away as possible. A surgeon can scarcely be confronted with a more
complete antithesis to his modern ideas of aseptic surgery than a
case like this, and many and prolonged applications of antiseptics
and deodorants are required before the wound begins to assume a
healthy aspect, even if inflammation and gangrene have not rendered
amputation a necessity. In the case of a small wound, the whole or
a part of the skin of a fowl is used in the same way, the flesh of
the slaughtered animal being always a part of the fee of the doctor.

The other remedy, or that known as the dam, is akin to what is known
in Western surgery as a "moxa." A piece of cloth is rolled up in a
pledget of the size of a shilling, steeped in oil, placed on the
part selected by the doctor, and set alight. It burns down into
the flesh, and a hard slough is formed; this gradually separates,
and leaves an ulcer, which heals by degrees. This remedy is used
for every conceivable illness, a particular part of the body being
selected according to the disease or the diagnostic ability of the
doctor who applies the remedy. Thus, in people who have suffered from
indigestion you will often see a line of scars down each side of the
abdomen. For neuralgia, it is applied to the temples; for headache,
to the scalp; for rheumatism, to the shoulders; for lumbago, to the
loins; for paralysis, to the back; for sciatica, to the thighs; and so
on indefinitely. I have counted as many as fifty scars, each the size
of a shilling, on one patient as the result of repeated applications
of this remedy. The Afghans have extraordinary faith in both these
treatments, and I have sometimes sat in a village listening to an
argument in which some young fellow, lately returned from a visit
to a mission hospital, recounted the wonderful things he had seen
there, to which some old conservative greybeard retorted: "What do
we want with all these new-fangled things? The dzan and the dam are
sufficient for us." As formerly in the West, so still in Afghanistan,
the village barber performs the ordinary surgical operations, such
as opening an absc