as from sitting on the wet ground. Piles are only a symptom, and in their treatment this should be kept in view ; remove the cause and the piles will disappear. The local treatment is palliative or radical. The palliative treatment consists in attention to the state of bowels, cold bathing, astringent injections, lotions, and ointments. The radical treatment consists in their removal; the external pile is cut off, the internal pile is tied or clamped and cauterized. Both methods have their advocates ; the radical treatment should not be undertaken until palliative treatment has failed. When in a state of inflammation the treatment consists in hip baths, hot fomentations, and poultices. The introduction of a morphia suppository often relieves the uneasiness. Both varieties are often met with in the same individual ; when this is the case both should be removed by operation at one time. The internal piles are apt to return if the predisposing cause is still in existence. Piles are apt to be confounded with other surgical diseases in this region, as fissure or ulcer, prolapse, polypus, or cancer. This is not the place to point out the distinguishing features of these different maladies ; the patient should consult a surgeon. There is a form of pile situated just at the verge of the anus, where the skin joins the mucous membrane : its onset is sudden, and due to the rupture of a blood-vessel ; the blood is extravasated and clots ; a small, tense, painful swelling of a bluish colour is seen at the edge of the anus. This may be relieved by hot fomentations, or the pile may be laid open and the clot
turned out by gentle pressure.HAFIZ. Muhammed Shamsuddin, better known by his takhallus or " noni de plume " of Hafiz, was one of the most celebrated writers of Persian lyrical poetry. He was born at Shiraz, the capital of Fars, in the early part of the 8th century of the Mahometan era, that is to say, in the 14th of our own, The exact date of his birth is uncertain, but he is known to have attained a ripe old age and to have died in 791 a.h. (1388 a.d.). This is the date given in the chronogram which is engraved on his tomb, although several Persian biographers give a different year. Very little is actually known about his life, which appears to have been passed in quiet retirement and literary ease in his native city of Shiraz, of which he always speaks in terms of affectionate admiration. He was a subject of the Muzaffar princes, who ruled in Shiraz, Yazd, Kirman, and Ispahan, until the dynasty was overthrown by Timur-lang (Tamerlane). Of these princes his especial patrons were Shah Shuja and Shah Mansur. He early devoted himself to the study of poetry and theology, and also became learned in mystic philosophy, which he studied under Shaikh Mahmud Attar, chief of an order of dervishes. Hafiz after wards enrolled himself in the same order and became a professor of Koranic exegesis in a college which his friend and patron Haji Kiwam-uddin, the vizier, specially founded for him. This was probably the reason of his adopting the sobriquet of .Hafiz, which means "one who remembers," and is technically applied to any person who has learned the Koran by heart. The restraints of an ascetic life seem to have been very little to Hafiz s taste, and his loose conduct and wine-bibbing propensities drew upon him the severe censure of his monastic colleagues. In revenge he satirizes them unmercifully in his verses, and seldom loses an opportunity of alluding to their hypocrisy and religious pretensions. Hafiz s fame as a poet was soon rapidly spread throughout the Mahometan world, and several powerful monarchs sent him presents and pressing invitations to visit them. Amongst others he was invited by Mahmud Shah Bahmani, who reigned in the south of India, and set off with the intention of sojourning at the court of that sovereign. After crossing the Indus and passing through Lahore he reached Hurmuz, and embarked on board a vessel sent for him by the Indian prince. He seems, however, to have been a bad sailor, and, having invented an excuse for being put ashore, made the best of his way back to Shiraz. Some biographies narrate a story of an interview between Hafiz and the invader Timur. The latter sent for him and asked angrily, " Art thou he who was so bold as to offer my two great cities Samarcand and Bokhara for the black mole on thy mistress s cheek," allud ing to a well-known verse in one of his odes. " Yes, sire," replied Hafiz, "and it is by such acts of generosity that I have brought myself to such a state of destitution that I have now to solicit your bounty." Timur was so pleased at the ready wit displayed in this answer that he dismissed the poet with a handsome present. Unfortunately for the truth of this story Timur did not capture Shiraz till 1393 a.d., while the latest date that can be assigned to Hafiz s death is 1391. Of his private life little or nothing is known. One of his poems is said to record the death of his wife, another that of a favourite unmarried son, and several others speak of his love for a girl called Shdkh i Nabat, " Sugar-cane branch," and this is almost all of his personal history that can be gathered from his writings. He was, like most Persians, a Shiah by religion, believing in the transmission of the office of Imam, or head of the Muslim Church in the family of Ali, cousin of the prophet, and rejecting the Hadith, or traditional sayings of Mahomet, which form the Sunneh or supplementary code of Mahometan ceremonial law. One of his odes which contains a verse in praise of Ali is engraved on the poet s tomb, but is omitted by Sudi, the Turkish editor and commentator, who was himself a rigid Suuni. The same sectarian bigotry has influenced many other editors, and it is no unusual thing to find an Indian edition of the Divan emasculated by the excision of all the passages which can be construed as having the slightest allusion to the objects of Shiah veneration. That his tendencies were towards a rather extravagant and heretical form of theosophy may be deduced from his writings, and in one verse he even goes so far as to speak in terms of admiration of one Mansur of Hallaj who was hanged, after being put to the most horrible tortures, on a charge of blasphemy, 309 a.h. This person professed a creed nearly approaching pure pantheism, and went about asserting that he was himself an incarnation of the omnipresent divinity, saying, Ana I Hakh, " I am the Truth ! " Hafiz in allusion to this says that his only fault was that he revealed the mystery. These heretical opinions and the dissipated life of the poet caused difficulties to be raised by the ecclesiastical authorities on his death as to his interment in consecrated ground. The question was at length settled by Hafiz s own works, which bad then already begun to be used as they are now throughout the East for the purposes of divination, in the same manner as Virgil was employed in the Middle Ages for the divination called Sortes Virgiliance. Opening the book at random after pronouncing the customary formula asking for inspira tion, the objectors hit upon the following verse " Turn not away thy foot from the bier of Hdfiz, for though immersed in sin, he will be admitted into Paradise." He was accordingly buried in the centre of a small cemetery at Shiraz, now included in an enclosure called the H^fiziyeh.
short odes or sonnets called ghazals, and consisting of from five to sixteen baits or couplets each, all the couplets in each ode having the same rhyme in the last hemistich, and the last couplet always introducing the poet s own nom de plume. The whole of these are arranged in alphabetical order, an arrangement which certainly facilitates reference but makes it absolutely impossible to ascertain their chrono logical order, and therefore deteriorates from their value as
a means of throwing light upon the growth and develop