Fleas In The Hospital

The passage below is from Reginald Heber’s Narrative of a Journey Through the Upper Provinces of India from Calcutta to Bombay, 1824-25. Incidentally, Heber’s book is still a great read 180 years after it was written.
‘At Broach is one of those remarkable institutions which have made a good deal of noise in Europe as incidences of Hindoo benevolence to inferior animals. I mean hospitals for sick and infirm beasts, birds and insects. I was not able to visit it, but Mr. Corsellis described it as a very dirty and neglected place, which, though it has considerable endowments in land, only serve to enrich the Brahmins who manage it. They have really animals of several different kinds there, not only those which are accounted sacred by the Hindoos, as monkeys, peacocks, etc, but horses, dogs and cats, and they have also, in little boxes, an assortment of lice and fleas. It is not true, however, that they feed those pensioners on the flesh of beggars hired for the purpose. The Brahmans say that insects, as well as the other inmates of their infirmary, are fed with vegetables only, such as rice etc. how the insects thrive I did not hear, but the old horses and dogs, nay the peacocks and apes are allowed to starve, and the only creatures said to be in any tolerable plight are some milch cows, which may be kept for from other motives than charity.’