APPENDIX, a 205 
Grate, strain, and dry slowly in the sun, and you have a starch for 
puddings or any other purpose for which starch has demand in the 
market. Gluten being a nerve-food, indispensable to health and 
vigour of both body and mind, the great abundance of it in the 
vassada—nearly three times as much as in wheat flour—the Cassada 
is pre-eminently “ the staff of life,” since there is no way by which 
its abundance of gluten can be wasted in preparation, as in wheat. 
There is a Providence here which shapes ends, since this chief food 
‘for tropical regions has so much nerve-supplying clements and so 
little of the heating elements, as compared with food in colder 
climates. 
But this abundant gluten, as compared with other foods for the 
sick, pre-eminently fits it for the sick-room, and especially so when 
we wish to increase strength instead of heat, and where any 
irritating and indigestible food-substances are forbidden. It requires 
longer boiling than starchy foods in general, and may be use. in 
the form of thin mucilage or demulcent, or ina more solid form with 
sugar, lemon juice, nutmeg or other aromatics, I suspect that, as 
physicians, we should make immense gain in restoring from prostrat- 
ing sicknesses by using more of this eligible substance in place of so 
much meat slops, and especially so in cases complicated with more or 
less gastric irritation, Meat foods must be excluded from the 
stomach in gastric ulcer. Why not, then, fall back upon this highly 
nitrogenous food for supporting the strength? Having so large 
a proportion of gluten over the starch, it offers immense advantages 
over wheaten and other bread in cases of diabetes where any starch 
at all is allowable. (By KL. Chenery, M.D., of Boston, ‘*The Times 
and Register,” April 5th, p, 318.) 
In the Cox’s Bazar district, Bengal, the tuberous roots are used 
by the Maghs in the preparation of a spirit. 
A false Kamala. 
Mr. Henry G. Greenish has examined a sample of Kamala from 
Bombay, and found it to have been carelessly collected, and mixed 
with badly preserved safilower and other extraneous matter, and 
reduced to coarse powder. (Pharm. Journ., March 11th, 1393.) 
