8 
DISEASES OF ANIMALS IN INDIA. 
common routine. I hope you have had the mylabris, and 
tried its power as a blister. So now, good-bye. If I remain 
here, I should like to have a line from you ; and if I go home, 
I shall hope to see you again. 
Believe me, my dear Sir, 
Very sincerely yours. 
Bangalore ; 
October , 1853. 
DISEASES OF ANIMALS IN INDIA. 
DIARRHCEA, &c. 
By J. T. Hodgson, Y.S. 
In India, the cereals are grown in the cold season, and the 
harvest being at the beginning of the hot season, it is always 
well got in; the subsequent periodical rains, however, fre- 
quently damage grain in the transit, both by land and in 
boats : besides, grain and pulses are hoarded by merchants, 
who well know that drought occurs, in some parts of the 
country, every three or four years, and then prices are higher, 
even for damaged mouldy grain, eaten by weavels. Rice is 
the rainy season crop ; upland rice is best for the table, and 
it is in general washed with alum water before being 
cooked; lowland rice being more inundated, is sometimes 
in a slimy condition ; but, as the husk is removed, and it is 
washed and cooked, I think it is the low quality, and the 
greater quantity required to satisfy, that causes Ouse rice to 
be sometimes injurious to man. For the same reason, (ahan) 
rice in the husk is improper food for horses and other 
animals ; but poultry and wild-fowl thrive when fed with it, 
if they be kept in clean, in well-ventilated places, with the use 
of fresh flowing water. 
We know the gastric secretion is powerfully antiseptic ; 
therefore a small quantity of grain in the condition describe d, 
might not be injurious, but highly deleterious in greater 
quantity. The same remarks apply to grass, which, in the 
rains, is very apt to smell musty, and even become mouldy. 
Diarrhoea is caused by high and low feeding, and by the 
quality of the food, and when the bowels are thus disordered, 
the natives give in the food, during the day, two ounces of 
(kalah nimuck) rock salt, coloured with red sulphuret of iron, 
which has the effect of removing the fetidness and slimy 
state of the bowels for which it is given ; and not with the 
view of counteracting any deleterious agent attached to the 
