The properties of the milk of various animals are described in great detail by Sanskrit writers. Milk in general is considered cooling, nutritive, strengthening and vitalizing. Cow's milk is pleasant to take and very wholesome. It promotes memory, strength and longevity and increases the secretion of semen, Buffalo's milk is said to be sweeter, heavier and more cooling than cow's milk. It induces sleepiness, spoils the appetite and brings on cold. Goat's milk is sweet, cooling and astringent. It promotes the digestive power and is useful in haemorrhagic diseases, phthisis, bowel complaints, etc. Ewe's milk is saltish, disagreeable and not easily digested. Mare's milk is saltish, acidulous and easily digested. Ass's milk is saltish, easily digested, and useful in debility and urinary complaints. Camel's milk is light, sweet, saltish, laxative and useful in dropsical affections. Human milk is light, cooling, nutritive, strengthening and useful as a collyrium or wash in eye diseases. All milk except human milk should be taken boiled. Warm milk just as it comes out from the teats is said to be like nectar.

As an article of diet, milk is considered demulcent, laxative, and especially adapted for children, old men, consumptive people or those reduced by debauchery, for women who are suckling and patients suffering from chronic fever, mental diseases, dyspepsia, diarrhoea, urinary complaints, ascites and anasarca. A pure milk-diet to the exclusion of every other article (not excepting even salt and water) is often prescribed in the later stages of anasarca, ascites and chronic bowel complaints. Along with this milk diet, some sort of medicine, such as Dugdha vati, Svarnaparpati or Mάna manda, is usually prescribed.

Takra or butter-milk. Four sorts of butter-milk are described, namely ghola or pure butter-milk without admixture of water, takra or butter-milk with one-fourth part of water, udasi or that mixed with half its bulk of water, and chhachchhika or very dilute butter-milk. The second form called takra is used in medicine and as an article of sick diet. It is regarded as astringent, light, cooling, appetizing, nutritive, tonic, and useful in diarrhoea, dysentery, dyspepsia, urinary diseases, ascites, poisoning, etc. It is not suited to the weak, or consumptive nor to those suffer-from fever and nervousness. The habitual use of butter-milk is said to be conducive to health and a preservative against disease.

Dadhi or curdled milk is prepared by adding some acid or a little curdled milk as a ferment to milk previously boiled. In the course of twelve hours the whole of the milk thus acted upon is changed into a more or less thick, acidulous, jelly-like mass. It is considered agreeable, digestive and cooling, and is much used as an aricle of diet by all classes of natives. Taken to excess it causes biliousness and catarrh. It is useful in fever, diarrhoea, dysentery, urinary disorders and disinclination for food.

Mastu or whey is said to have properties similar to those of curdled milk. In particular it is said to favour the circulation of the animal fluids and to be useful in constipation.

Kilάtaka or curd of milk (Vern. chhenά, Beng.) is hard of digestion, but is nourishing, tonic and suited to persons with strong digestive powers.

Santάnikά or cream is also hard of digestion but nourishing, agreeable and demulcent.

Navanita or butter is tonic, astringent, invigorating, stomachic and useful in phthisis, piles, facial paralysis, etc. It agrees best with the old and young.

Ghrita or clarified butter is much used both as an article of diet and in pharmacy. Clarified butter obtained from cow's milk is considered superior to that prepared from the milk of the buffalo and is preferred for medicinal use. Clarified butter is considered cooling, emollient and stomachic. It increases the fatty tissues and mental powers, improves the voice, beauty and complexion and is useful in eye diseases, retained secretions, insanity, tympanites, painful dyspepsia, ulcers, wounds, etc. It is the basis of a form of medicinal preparation called ghritapaka already described in the introduction, (see page 14).

Purana ghrita. Clarified butter more than ten years old, passes by this name.1 It has a strong pungent odour and the colour of lac. The longer this old butter is kept the more efficacious it is said to prove as an external application. Clarified butter a hundred years old is often heard of. The richer natives always have a stock of old ghrita of this description which they preserve with care for their own use as well as for distribution to their poorer neighbours. I have seen some specimens of old clarified butter which were quite dry and hard and nearly inodorous. They looked more like some sort of earth than an animal substance. Old clarified butter is used externally. It is first repeatedly washed with cold water, and then rubbed with it till it is reduced to a soapy frothy fluid which is used as a liniment. It is regarded as cooling and emollient and is much used in nervous diseases such as insanity, epilepsy, neuralgia, paralysis, cephalalgia and asthma, in rheumatic affections, stiff joints, burning of the body, hands or feet, affections of the eyes, etc.2

The following treatment is recommended for reducing the temperature of the skin in strong fever. The patient's body should be anointed with an emulsion of sandal wood and of old clarified butter that has been washed a hundred times in cold water. He should then enter a tepid bath for a short while. His bedding should be made of the leaves of Nelumbium speciosum (kamala).1 ----------