Touching milk, which is the basis (next to rice) of all the natives food, I confess I was surprized to find it one of the forbidden articles, until I was made acquainted with their reasoning on the subject. They say that milk becomes highly nutritious, not only from its natural qualities, but principally from its ready admission into the blood, and quick assimulation with it; and that it consequently is a warm heating diet, and must have a remote tendency to inflammation, whenever the blood is thrown into any preternatural ferment, and therefore, that milk is a food highly improper, at a season when the preternatural fermentation that produces the Small Pox ought to be feared, and guarded against by every person who knows himself liable to the disease, or determined to prepare himself for receiving it, either from nature or art. Upon this principle and reasoning it is, that their women, during the course of their periodical visitations, are strictly forbid, and religiously abstain from, the use of milk, lest it should, upon any accidental cold, dispose the uterus to inflammation and ulceration; and from the same apprehension, the use of it is as strictly prohibited during the flow of the lochia, and is avoided as so much poison; our European women, resident in India, have adopted the same precaution from experience of the effect, and will not, on any consideration, at those times, mix the smallest quantity with their tea, a lesson they derive from their Midwives, who are all natives, and generally are instructed in their calling by the Bramins, and other Practitioners in Physic. Concerning the third interdicted article, they allege, that under _that_ is implied a prohibition of all fat and oily substances, as their qualities are nearly similar with those of fish, and similar in their effects of fouling the first passages in a high degree above any other aliment that is taken into them; that they soon acquire an acrimony in the course of digestion, and convey the same into the blood and juices; these premises being granted, which I think can hardly be denied, there appears sufficient cause for prohibiting the use of the whole tribe; the more especially, as ghee and oil are the essential ingredients used in cooking their vegetable diet.