Description

Fernando SADORIS.

ප්‍රමෙහෞෂධ මඤ්ජරිය
[Prayogabtaisadhamanjariya / Therapeutic Bouquets ?]

Colombo: කොළඹ ග්‍රන්ථ ප්‍රකාශ යනන්ත්‍රාලයෙහි [Colombo Publishing House] 1897.

8°, [2 pp.], 34 pp., original wrappers with lettering, bound together with original string (uncut example, margins with minor staining and tiny tears in margins, old annotations in pencil on the cover, but overall in a good condition).

[And:]
Fernando SADORIS.
ප්‍රමෙහෞෂධ මඤ්ජරිය
[Prayogabtaisadhamanjariya / Therapeutic Bouquets ?]. Part 2.

Colombo: කොළඹ ග්‍රන්ථ ප්‍රකාශ යනන්ත්‍රාලයෙහි [Colombo Publishing House] 1898.

8°, 23 pp., original wrappers with lettering, bound together with original string (uncut example, light staining in margins, stronger on the first page, title page with staining and loss of paper in the upper part, but overall in a good condition).

A rare pair of pamphlets in Sinhala language was printed in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The author was Sadoris Fernando, who describes himself the introduction as a “native doctor”.

The first pamphlet lists various healing recipes for food and drinks, deriving from Sri Lankan traditional medicine, and describes the diseases of male and female reproductive organs and urinary tract infections, which were common at the island at the time. The text also describes the plants and their parts, used in medicine.

The second volume followed a year after the first one, according to the epilogue as a result of huge success of the first book, which caused the readers to write numberless letters to the author. The text describes further healing recipes, with ingredients such as coconut, curcuma and various spices, how to ferment drinks, make soaps and washing water from various ingredients etc.

We could not trace any institutional examples in western libraries.