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. I had once occasion
to go to the city of Ratanpur[8] on business, and was one day, about
noon, walking in the market-place and eating a very fine piece of
sugar-cane. In the crowd I happened, by accident, to jostle an old
woman as she passed me.
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