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Letter from B. J. Bettelheim.
FEB.
fro, and will necessarily come into this port; if your government treat them well, and prepare for sale necessaries for their use, the country will soon flourish, and be greatly the gainers by such a traf- fic.' This country is small and its productions few, and when a foreign ship comes in here, even the water and vegetables she re- quires are obtained and furnished with difficulty; as to preparing articles for selling to them, it certainly is more than the resources of this kingdom would permit. How then, can we be scheming for gain, and laying plans for enriching ourselves?
“And lastly you say; ‘Bettelheim has a large supply of medicines which he brought here from England; if any person is afflicted with disease, request him to come to his house, and the English doctor will zealously do all he can to cure him.' For a very long period, we have practiced the medical art in this country as it is done in China; and in healing diseases, we have therefore no need of em- ploying the English modes of cure.
"I humbly beg your excellency to examine this, and consider these things. An earnest petition. May 27th, 1849.”
The conclusion of this letter, of which one most gratifying feature is the omission of prayer for, or even an allusion to our removal, leads me to add a few words on my medical labors.
In the first year of my arrival, I had upwards of fifty patients, most of them suffering from cutaneous diseases leprosy, psora, lepra, elephantiasis, tumors, &c., just as you have in China. I think the night soil, universally used for manure here as it is in China, without undergoing any preparatory process, and the almost exclusive use of pork as animal food, are among, if not the only chief causes of the prevalence of these disorders. We ourselves, and our poor children, have suffered, and the latter still suffer from psora, in many of its forms. We have obtained some relief by giving up the use of pork and protecting our feet, for the naked feet of the natives (which, before the Preble pitied us, we were obliged to imitate) has no doubt much to do with the frequency of elephantiasis, and other malignant pustules, which from the extremities spread disorder over the whole system. Cataract, leucoma and staphyloma, are not rare, but I only succeeded in getting hold of the hand of a man whose eyes were both covered with leucoma; I led him home, but besides there not being much hope of recovery or relief, he was removed on the second day of treatment by my guard. Several respectable persons from the capital called, and the itch ointment and eye-water promised well; since the death of the king all this has been stopped.
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