You Demand L10 For
The Dysentery, And L20 For The Sciatica.
But you will rarely get it.
The Eastern pays a doctor's bill as an Oirishman does his "rint,"
making a grievance of it.
Your patient will show indisputable signs of
convalescence: he will laugh and jest half the day; but the moment you
appear, groans and a lengthened visage, and pretended complaints,
welcome you. Then your way is to throw out some such hint as
"The world is a carcass, and they who seek it are dogs."
And you refuse to treat the second disorder, which conduct may bring
the refractory one to his senses. "Dat Galenus opes," however, is a
Western apothegm: the utmost "Jalinus" can do for you here is to
provide you with the necessaries and comforts of life. Whatever you
prescribe must be solid and material, and if you accompany it with
something painful, such as rubbing to scarification with a horse-brush,
so much the better. Easterns, like our peasants in Europe, wish the
doctor to "give them the value of their money." Besides which, rough
measures act beneficially upon their imagination. So the Hakim of the
King of Persia cured fevers by the bastinado; patients are beneficially
baked in a bread-oven at Baghdad; and an Egyptian at Alexandria, whose
quartan resisted the strongest appliances of European physic, was
effectually healed by the actual cautery, which a certain Arab Shaykh
applied to the crown of his head. When you administer with your own
hand the remedy-half-a-dozen huge bread pills, dipped in a solution of
aloes or cinnamon water, flavoured with assafoetida, which in the case
of the dyspeptic rich often suffice, if they will but
[p.55]diet themselves-you are careful to say, "In the name of Allah,
the Compassionate, the Merciful." And after the patient has been dosed,
"Praise be to Allah, the Curer, the Healer;" you then call for pen,
ink, and paper, and write some such prescription as this:
"A.[FN#11]
"In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful, and blessings
and peace be upon our Lord the Apostle, and his family, and his
companions one and all! But afterwards let him take bees-honey and
cinnamon and album graecum, of each half a part, and of ginger a whole
part, which let him pound and mix with the honey, and form boluses,
each bolus the weight of a Miskal, and of it let him use every day a
Miskal on the saliva.[FN#12] Verily its effects are wonderful. And let
him abstain from flesh, fish, vegetables, sweetmeats, flatulent food,
acids of all descriptions, as well as the major ablution, and live in
perfect quiet. So shall he be cured by the help of the King, the
Healer.[FN#13] And The Peace.[FN#14]"
The diet, I need scarcely say, should be rigorous; nothing has tended
more to bring the European system of medicine into contempt among
Orientals than our inattention to this branch of the therapeutic art.
When an Hindi or a Hindu "takes medicine," he prepares himself for it
by diet and rest two or three days before adhibition, and as gradually,
after the dose, he relapses into his usual habits; if he break through
the regime it is concluded that fatal results must ensue.
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