Chai'. II.] HEALTH. 77 



supplied as best suited to tlie climate. With a moderate 

 use of flesh meat, vegetables, aud especially farmaceous 

 food, are chiefly to be commended. 



The latter is rendered attractive by the umivallcd 

 excellence of the Singhalese in the preparation of in- 

 numerable curries ^, each tempered by the dehcate 

 creamy juice expressed from the flesh of the coco-nut 

 after it has been reduced to a pulp. Nothing of the 

 same class in India can bear a comparison with the 

 piquant dehcacy of a curry in Ceylon, composed of fresh 

 condiments and compounded by the skilful hand of a 

 native. 



The use of fruit — Fruits are abundant and wholesome ; 

 but mth the exception of oranges, pineapples, the luscious 

 mango and the indescribable " rambutan," for want of 

 horticultural attention they are inferior in flavour, and 

 soon cease to be alluring. 



Wine. — Wine has of late years become accessible to 

 all, and has thus, in some degree, been substituted for 

 brandy ; the abuse of which at former periods is com- 

 memorated in the records of tliose fearfifl disorders of 

 the hver, derangements of the brain, exhausting fevers, 

 and visceral diseases, which characterise the medical 

 annals of earher times. With a firm adlierence to tem- 

 perance in the enjopnent of stimulants, and moderation 

 in the pleasures of the table, with- attention to exercise 

 and frequent resort to the batli, it may be confidently 

 asserted that health in Ceylon is as capable of preser- 

 vation and hfe as susceptible of enjoyment, as in any 

 country mtliin the tropics. 



Exposure. — Prudence and foresight are, however, 

 as indispensable there as in any other chmate to escape 

 weU-understood risks. Catarrhs and rheiunatism are 



' The popular eiTor of tliinkinp; I tlie Christian era, and in the JLt/ia- 



cuny to be an invention of the Por- tciniso in the fifth centnrv of it. This 



tugiiese in India is disproved by tlie j subject is mentioned elsewhere : see 



mention in the Rajnvali of its use in I chapter on the ^\i"ts and Sciences of 



Ceylon in the second century before I the Singhalese. 



