continuance of an eclipse:  these offerings are afterwards distributed in charity.  Women expecting to become mothers are carefully kept awake during an eclipse, as they declare the infant’s security depends on the mother being kept from sleep; they are not allowed to use a needle, scissors, knife, or any other instrument during an eclipse, for fear of drawing blood, which would be injurious at that period, both to the mother and child; neither are the animals in a similar state neglected; a mixture of cow-dung and drugs is rubbed over the belly of such animals, whether cows, sheep, goats, &c., and all these are securely housed until the planet is again resplendent:  they fancy that both the animal and its young would be endangered by exposure during the time of the eclipse.

The power of the moon on wounded persons is believed universally to be of dangerous tendency.  I have heard many extraordinary relations by people who, as they tell me, have suffered from exposure to the moon whilst a wound was fresh.  One person had received a severe sabre-cut on his arm; the place was sewed up by the barber (the only surgeon amongst the Natives), and being much exhausted he laid down to sleep in the open air.  The moon was near the full, and after some hours’ exposure to her influence he awoke in great agony; the barber examined the arm early in the morning and found the cut in a state of corruption, the sewing having burst; the wound was cleansed, and dressed with pounded camphor; the place eventually healed, and the man lived many years to tell his story, always declaring his belief that the moon had been the cause of his sufferings; he was the more certain of this as he dreamed whilst exposed to her influence, that a large black woman (an inhabitant of the moon) had wrestled with him, and hurt his wound.

The usual application in India to a fresh wound is that of slacked lime.  A man in our employ was breaking wood, the head of the hatchet came off, and the sharp edge fell with considerable force on the poor creature’s foot; he bled profusely and fainted, lime was unsparingly applied, to the wound, the foot carefully wrapped up, and the man conveyed to his hut on a charpoy (bedstead), where he was kept quiet without disturbing the wound; at the end of a fortnight he walked about, and in another week returned to his labour.[39]

Lime is an article of great service in the domestic economy of the Natives.  I have experienced the good effects of this simple remedy for burns or scalds:  equal proportions of lime, water, and any kind of oil, made into a thin paste, and immediately applied and repeatedly moistened, will speedily remove the effects of a burn; and if applied later, even when a blister has risen, the remedy never fails:  I cannot say how it might act on a wound, the consequence of a neglected burn.

The lime used with pawn by the natives of India is considered very beneficial to health; and they use it in great quantities, considering that they never eat pawn without lime, and the most moderate pawn eaters indulge in the luxury at least eight times in the course of the day.  The benefit of lime is worth the consideration of the medical world—­as a preventive in some climates, as a renovater in others.