“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.  The ancient Egyptians we learn from Herodotus devoted a certain number of days in each month to the use of alteratives, and the

[p.56]period was consecutive, doubtless in order to graduate the strength of the medicine.  The Persians, when under salivation, shut themselves up in a warm room, never undress, and so carefully guard against cold that they even drink tepid water.  When the Afghan princes find it necessary to employ Chob-Chini, (the Jin-seng, [FN#15] or China