dcutters than like future doctors in medicine. We were often
obliged to escort in person those of the number who had special charge of
the aromatic plants; for our camels, which, attracted by the odour,
always put themselves in pursuit of these personages, would otherwise
inevitably, and without the smallest scruple, have devoured those
precious simples, destined for the relief of suffering humanity. The
remainder of the day is occupied in cleaning and spreading out on mats
these various products of the vegetable kingdom. The medical harvest
lasted eight whole days. Five other days are devoted to the selection
and classification of the various articles. On the fourteenth day, a
small portion is given to each student, the great bulk remaining the
property of the Faculty of Medicine. The fifteenth day is kept as a
festival, in the form of a grand banquet of tea with milk, barley-meal,
little cakes fried in butter, and boiled mutton. Thus terminates this
botanico-medical expedition, and the illustrious Faculty gaily returns to
the Grand Lamasery.

The drugs collected at Tchogortan are deposited in the general drug-room
of Kounboum. When they have been thoroughly dried in the heat of a
moderate fire, they are reduced to powder, and then divided into small
doses, which are neatly enveloped in red paper, and labelled with
Thibetian characters. The pilgrims who visit Kounboum, buy these
remedies at exorbitant prices. The Tartar-Mongols never return home
without an ample supply of them, having an unlimited confidence in
whatever emanates from Kounboum. On their own mountains and prairies
they would find exactly the same plants, the same shrubs, the same roots,
the same grasses; but then how different must be the plants, shrubs,
roots, and grasses that grow and ripen in the birth-place of Tsong-Kaba!

The Thibetian physicians are as empirical as those of other
countries--possibly somewhat more so. They assign to the human frame
forty hundred and forty maladies, neither more nor less. The books which
the Lamas of the Faculty of Medicine are obliged to study and to learn by
heart, treat of these four hundred and forty maladies, indicating their
characteristics, the means of identifying them, and the manner of
combating them. These books are a hotch-potch of aphorisms, more or less
obscure, and of a host of special recipes. The Lama physicians have not
so great a horror of blood as the Chinese physicians have--they b