Page:McCosh, John - Advice to Officers in India (1856).djvu/225

 happen to survive the infliction, and recover, he is considered an outcast and a vagabond because he did not die.

We have put down Sutteeism,female infanticide and human sacrifice,but we forget that in the most populous cities of India, even in the city of Calcutta, sacrifices of life no less atrocious are every day perpetrated.

We have only to go to any of the Murdah Ghauts, above the mint, the public places of incineration, and there we shall see the old, the middle aged, the young and the beautiful of both sexes, exposed in their last agonies, with only three or four hired mourners preparing their funeral pile, and a party of vultures, grim, gory, and abominable as harpies, hopping near them, eagerly watching when the vital spark shall be extinct.

The following case is so much to the point, that I make no apology for inserting it, and though it occurred more than fifteen years ago,yet I believe similar cases still occur. In Calcutta, on an evening of January, I accompanied a medical friend during a visit to a native lady of rank, who had a miscarriage that day at noon. The patient was a young woman to all appearance lately in good health; she lay quite insensible, breathing laboriously, and pulseless; eyes fixed, and open, skin of natural warmth: the room filled with