had been practised only on goats and a few other animals. But in 1837 four of the most promising students in the new college might be seen using their scalpels on a human corpse, and many more were soon to follow their example. Similar colleges sprang up in Bombay and Madras. In course of time India came to possess a school of medical science worthy to compare with some of its Western rivals. Medical schools of various grades have since been established in many parts of our Indian Empire, furnishing useful assistants to the medical chiefs, filling the public hospitals and dispensaries with a large staff of skilful workers, and relieving the ordinary ailments of the people.
On his way up the country in the cold season of 1837-8, the Governor-General had a near view of the horrors caused by a famine which was then raging over the whole Doáb, from Allahábád to Delhi. The drought which began in 1836 had now turned the broad plains between the Jumna and the Ganges into a brown sandy waste. There was little food left either for men or cattle. Multitudes of starving wretches thronged the road from Cawnpur to Agra, dying in heaps by the wayside, or trying to live upon roots, berries, and refuse straw, glad even to pick out the grain which had passed undigested through the bodies of troop-horses on the march. Private charity saved here and there a few lives, and many sufferers found strength to earn their daily meal of rice or coarse grain on the relief-works which the Government had started in the stricken districts. But in
