Page:Shubala - a child-mother (IA shubalachildmoth00soraiala).pdf/24

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16
SHUBALA—

for: and I will make the sacrifice with you."

Thus was the way clear for vaccination. But only alas! after the heaviest toll had already been taken.

A danger which is difficult to combat, is the belief that magic can cure the simplest as the most complicated disease.

A child has fallen into the fire. Its burns are left to become gangrenous; but an old house-wife is making spells in the next room in an agony of love and pity.

Another lies covered with flies and midgets, and festering itch. They tie amulets round his neck, and in some parts of the country, get in a Chumar (worker-in-leather), to weave a spell for his recovery: but mustard-oil, and indigestible food shared probably by the flies before the child can eat it, is all of treatment independently of magic, which occurs to those responsible.

And the fly reminds one that of its