, he has
designated the "betel-chewer's cancer."]

It is seldom, however, that we find in semi-civilised life habits
universally prevailing which have not their origin, however ultimately
they may be abused by excess, in some sense of utility. The Turk, when
he adds to the oppressive warmth of the sun by enveloping his forehead
in a cumbrous turban, or the Arab, when he increases the sultry heat by
swathing his waist in a showy girdle, may appear to act on no other
calculation than a willingness to sacrifice comfort to a love of
display; but the custom in each instance is the result of precaution--in
the former, because the head requires especial protection from
sun-strokes; and in the latter, from the fact well known to the Greeks
([Greek: eozonoi Achaioi]) that, in a warm climate, danger is to be
apprehended from a sudden chill to that particular region of the
stomach. In like manner, in the chewing of the areca-nut with its
accompaniments of lime and betel, the native of Ceylon is unconsciously
applying a specific corrective to the defective qualities of his daily
food. Never eating flesh meat by any chance, seldom or never using milk,
butter, poultry, or eggs, and tasting fish but occasionally (more rarely
in the interior of the island,) the non-azotised elements abound in
every article he consumes with the exception of the bread-fruit, the
jak, and some varieties of beans. In their indolent and feeble stomachs
these are liable to degenerate into flatulent and acrid products; but,
apparently by instinct, the whole population have adopted a simple
prophylactic. Every Singhalese carries in his waistcloth an ornamented
box of silver or brass, according to his means, enclosing a smaller one
to hold a portion of chunam (lime obtained by the calcination of shells)
whilst the larger contains the nuts of the areca and a few fresh leaves
of the betel-pepper. As inclination or habit impels, he scrapes down the
nut, which abounds in catechu, and, rolling it up with a little of the
lime in a betel-leaf, the whole is chewed, and finally swallowed, after
provoking an extreme salivation. No medical prescription could be more
judiciously compounded to effect the desired object than this practical
combination of antacid, the tonic, and carminative.

The custom is so ancient in Ceylon and in India that the Arabs and
Persians who resorted to Hindustan in the eighth and ninth centuries
carried back the habit to their own country; and