MR. JUSTIN M'CARTHYasked the Under Secretary of State for India, Whether experiments conducted each on a considerable scale by Mr. F. C. Brown in Malabar for fifteen years, 1822 to 1837, by Dr. Bedman, Madras Army, in Hoashungabad in 1857, during a violent cholera epidemic, by the Deputy Commissioner, Khundnea, Central Provinces, in 1863, and in a number of gaols in India since these dates, have established the value of salt as a preventive; and, whether therefore, Government will endeavour to reduce the salt tax in India from its present rate of over 1,000 per cent. on the prime cost of the article?
§ MR. J. K. CROSSI am aware of the circumstances referred to in the Question of the hon. Member; but I understand that the highest medical opinion of the present day does not support the idea 1731 that salt has any specific influence on cholera, though an insufficiency of salt certainly renders persons more liable to epidemic disease. I have already informed the hon. Member that a further reduction of the Salt Tax is not at present practicable.