GHEE (Sanskrit, Ghrita), a kind of clarified butter made in the East. The best is prepared from butter of the milk of cows, the less esteemed from that of buffaloes. The butter is melted over a slow fire, and set aside to cool; the thick, opaque, whitish, and more fluid portion, or ghee, representing the greater bulk of the butter, is then removed. The less liquid residue, mixed with groundnut oil, is sold as an inferior kind of ghee. It may be obtained also, according to the Indian Domestic Economy and Receipt Book, p. 16, 6th ed., 1865, by boiling butter over a clear fire, skimming it the while, and, when all the water has evaporated, straining it through a cloth. Ghee which is rancid or tainted, as is often that of the Indian bazaar3, is said to be rendered sweet by boiling with leaves of the Moriηgα pterygosperma or horse-radish tree. In India ghee is one of the commonest articles of diet, and indeed enters into the composition of everything eaten by the Brahmans. It is also extensively used in Indian religious ceremonies, being offered as a sacrifice to idols, which are at times bathed in it. Sanskrit treatises on therapeutics describe ghee as cooling, emollient, and stomachic, as capable of increasing the mental powers, and of improving the voice and personal appearance, and as useful in eye-diseases, tympanitis, painful dyspepsia, wounds, ulcers, and other affections. Old ghee is in special repute among the Hindus •as a medicinal agent, and its efficacy as an external application is believed by them to increase with its age. Ghee more than 10 years old, the pur ana ghrita of Sanskrit materia medicas, has a strong odour, and the colour of lac. Some specimens which have been much longer preserved—and “clarified butter a hundred years old is often heard of ...

GHEEL, or Geel, a town of Belgium, in the province of Antwerp, about 25 miles E. of Antwerp, on the railway between Herenthals and Moll, with a population, according to the census of 1876, of 10,265. Situated in the midst of that half barren stretch of moorland which is known as the Campine or Kampenland, it would have been of little importance, in spite of its manufactures of cloth, leather, wooden shoes, and wax-lights, had it not for long centuries been the seat of a unique method of dealing with the insane. A local legend, tracing the origin of the town back to a chapel of St Martin erected in the 7th century, goes on to tell how an Irish princess, fearing the fate that long afterwards befel Beatrice Cenci, sought refuge in this remote asylum, but was pursued by her relentless father and put to death, along with a priest Gerrebert, the companion of her flight. The tomb of the victims was soon discovered to have a healing virtue for minds diseased: the sainted Dymphna became the patroness of the insane; and a large and beautiful church in her honour was erected on the site of St Martin’s chapel. Commenced in the 12th century, it was finished in 1340, and consecrated by the bishop of Cambray; and the pilgrimages to the tomb were sanctioned by a brief of Eugenius IV. In 1538 Jean de Mérode, within whose domains the church was situated, instituted a vicariate of nine priests and a director, and in 1562 Henri de Mérode transformed the vicariate into a regular chapter of nine canons and a dean. The church still remains to bear witness to the importance formerly attached to the shrine; and though the tomb of St Dymphna has long been a cenotaph, a few stray enthusiasts still pass beneath it in hopeful imitation of the thousands in byegone years, whose knees have worn ...