Kahhal
This article is an extract from
THE TRIBES and CASTES of BENGAL. Ethnographic Glossary. Printed at the Bengal Secretariat Press. 1891. . |
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Kahhal
The cities of Benares and Lucknow are famous for their oculists, who are either Muhammadans or Hindu Khattris. During the cold season individuals belonging to these families travel about Bengal, operating in the villages and towns.
At Sholaghar, Pargannah Bikrampur, resides a Muhammadan family which has practised ophthalmic surgery for many generations. They possess no text books, but the art is transmitted from father to son, and the young men are carefully instructed by the elders.
These native oculists recognize two varieties of cataract, Nil-bind, the hard, and Motiya-bind, the soft. The former they cannot cure, but the latter they often successfully treat. The operation1 that they practise is very like that formerly advocated by Sir James Earle and Mr. B. Bell, which is known as "extraction through the sclerotic."
The operation is performed in the following manner:�An incision parallel to the lower and outer edge of the cornea is made with a lancet-shaped knife (bans-patta), held between the thumb and forefinger so that only about the fourth of an inch can penetrate the globe. On its withdrawal a blunt pointed triangular probe2 being introduced the cataract is broken up, and on the probe being suddenly drawn out the milky lens escapes.
After the operation the eyelids are smeared with an ointment consisting of opium, nux-vomica, "tulasi," black pepper, "Pathani lodh," and pulse (masur), over which cotton wool is bound. Every day the eye is steamed with the fumes of heated "Ber," charcoal, and for seven days the diet is limited to clarified butter, sugar, wheat flour, pulse, and the sweetmeat batasa while, should inflammation threaten, the actual cautery is applied to the temple. On the seventh day after the operation the patient is permitted to eat the head of a Rohu fish, but until the expiration of a month he is not allowed to resume his usual diet.
The head of this family, Shaikh Lakhu, is very successful in operating, and several well-known residents of Dacca, besides members of the Rajah of Tipperah's family, owe the almost perfect eyesight, which they now enjoy, to his skill.
The only other disease operated on by these oculists is Pterygium (nakhuna), a very common affection in Eastern Bengal. They raise the web with a curved needle, and snip it across with a pair of scissors.
Six or eight Muhammadan youths, learning to become oculists, are always to be found at Sholaghar, who are taught in the following curious manner: First of all, they are trained to make straight cuts in a leaf with a lancet, and are then obliged to practise on the eyes of dead goats, and of the Rohu fish, the only animals procurable for this purpose in a Bengali village.
1 This operation was practised in Madras last century. See Forbes' "Oriental Memoirs," vol. ii, 379.
2 It must be made of equal parts of copper, brass, and iron.
