Page:McCosh, John - Advice to Officers in India (1856).djvu/221

 either from the material itself or its mode of cooking. None is more deleterious than the half-cured or wholly putrid fish so much in use by the poor. Such amess requires little salt and goes a greater way than if fresh or properly cured; but in proportion as it saves the means of the consumer, it excites a predisposition to disease. Raw rice, underbaked bread,raw vegetables, deficiency of salt,or wood ashes used instead of salt, and the inveterate practice of smoking tobacco mixed with some intoxicating drug, generally hemp-seed (called bang), have also a powerful effect in lowering the standard of health.

But when it is considered, that a great mass of the population, not only live,but support a family on three, or four rupees a month, the wonder is how they exist at all.

But putrid fish is a delicacy compared to what some natives indulge in.

Aghorpunts, or eaters of dead men's flesh are occasionally met with. During my service in Assam, two men of this caste were sent to me by the magistrate to have my opinion as to their sanity. One of them was not exactly composmentis, but the other was of sound mind, and assured me he had been in the habit of eating human flesh for years. I believe the practice of appearing in a bazar, picking the flesh off a thigh bone is often done by way of horrifying the