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Practice of Medicine – Native Doctors.
The Siamese formerly believed that the human system is composed of four elements: water, wind, fire and earth; that disease is simply a disarrangement of these elements; hence if fire from without, the heat of the sun, for instance, enters the body in undue proportion fevers, small-pox, etc., necessarily follows. Each element is claimed by the physicians to have its regular seasons, similar to climatic changes. In the native books that they read they are told that during such a month that wind is prone to prevail and beget disease, another month fire. Appoplexy, they say, is caused by an internal wind blowing upon the heart with such strength as to rupture it. The theory of the native doctors is that all diseases are produced from an excess or diminution of one or more of the four elements. Wind, lom in Siamese, seems to be the leading element, and in nineteen cases out of twenty a sick person, when questioned, will reply as to what ails him, “pen lom,” it is wind. They believe that it enters the system by inhalation and proceeds to the lead as wind enters into a bellows; without it the blood would not flow, perspiration cease, bile stagnate, bowels inactive and the waste gates of the system remain closed. It is supposed that there are two divisions of wind, above and below the diaphragm. Rheumatism, epilepsy, etc., are caused by the wind blowing upward; colic, pains in the loins, legs, etc., by
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