He and his friends believe that the man who can command these powers to cure one individual can command them to cure any other; and, if he does not do so, they believe that it arises from a desire to destroy the patient.

I have, in these territories, known a great many instances of medical practitioners having been put to death for not curing young people for whom they were required to prescribe.

Several cases have come before me as a magistrate in which the father has stood over the doctor with a drawn sword by the side of the bed of his child, and cut him down and killed him the moment the child died, as he had sworn to do when he found the patient sinking under his prescriptions.[5] The town of Jubbulpore contains a population of twenty thousand souls,[6] and they all believed in this story of the cock.

I one day asked a most respectable merchant in the town, Nadu Chaudhri, how the people could believe in such things, when he replied that he had no doubt witches were to be found in every part of India, though they abounded most, no doubt, in the central parts of it, and that we ought to consider ourselves very fortunate in having no such things in England.

'But', added he, 'of all countries that between Mandla and Katak (Cuttack)[7] is the worst for witches.