You "sahib log" (European gentlemen) will not believe all this, but it is, nevertheless, all very true.'[4] The belief in sorcery among these people owes its origin, in a great measure, to the diseases of the liver and spleen to which the natives, and particularly the children, are much subject in the jungly parts of Central India.

From these affections children pine away and die, without showing any external marks of disease.

Their death is attributed to witchcraft, and any querulous old woman, who has been in the habit of murmuring at slights and ill treatment in the neighbourhood, is immediately set down as the cause.

Men who practise medicine among them are very commonly supposed to be at the same time wizards.

Seeking to inspire confidence in their prescriptions by repeating prayers and incantations over the patient, or over the medicine they give him, they make him believe that they derive aid from supernatural power; and the patient concludes that those who can command these powers to cure can, if they will, command them to destroy.