DRUGS. Dawa of the Arabs and Marndu of the Dravidian races. Amongst 'the physicians of the east and south of Asia, as in Europe until recent times, almost every substance possessing any peculiarity of colour, shape, smell, or taste, is believed to have some medicinal virtue. Much reliance is placed by them on the doctrine of the signatures, i.e. the belief that a substance which has some of the physical characters of an organ, or of the symptoms of a disease, will have power over what it resembles. Some substances (chiefly animal, however) are considered to have medicinal virtues merely from their oddity,—for example, pikhal mils, rat's drug, the gall-bladder of the brown bear the hairs of a tiger's whisker, etc. Difficulty of' acquisition would also appear to add virtue. Thus it frequently happens that of two kinds of a drug, the one which is more rare is considered much the more powerful,—in some cases, indeed, when neither would appear to have any special virtue. The hakim of India has curious beliefs
as to the plants which produce some of the foreign vegetable drugs, and still more curious theories are held as to the source of some of those of mineral origin. Thus Zahr-mohra, which com prise several mineral substances given medicinally, is believed by them to be formed by the spittle of the Mar-khor (Capra rnegaceros) falling on stones in the Kohistan, west of the Indus. The great number of substances to which, by natives and in their books on medicine, aphrodisiac virtues are attributed, is remarkable, some in connection with the doctrine of signatures, but most of them probably quite destitute of the qualities assigned to them. Drugs of Cachar and Tibet hold a high reputation in Northern India.—Powell's Handbook.