On Beholding This Strange Mode Of Practice,
My Persian Friend Asked Me, If That Was The Manner Of Treating Sick
People in my country, to which I answered that it was, but only in cases
of extremity; on which he
Observed with a smile, that he believed it
would certainly relieve him one way or other. In the mean time, the sick
man cried out in his own language, "It is enough, it is enough, for my
soul now departeth." We comforted him as well as we could, desiring him
to have patience yet a little longer; and almost immediately his belly
was loosened, and he voided like a gutter. We then let him down, and he
continued to discharge a prodigious quantity, so that shortly the pain
of his head and stomach left him, and his fever was assuaged, which gave
us all great joy. By this adventurous cure, and my counterfeit
holiness, I grew into great credit, and when my patient offered me ten
pieces of gold as my reward, I would only accept two, which I gave away
immediately among the poor.
These silly people believed implicitly in my hypocrisy, which I shewed
in a constrained gravity of countenance and deportment, and by
forbearing openly from eating flesh, insomuch that all thought
themselves happy to have me at their houses, or to kiss my hands and
feet. The report also of my companion, that he had met with me first at
Mecca, where I had gone to see the body of the holy prophet Mahomet,
greatly increased among the Mahometans the opinion of my sanctity.
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