Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah — Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 552 pages of information about Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah — Volume 1.

Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah — Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 552 pages of information about Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah — Volume 1.
Asia, and was well known in Europe when Sarsaparilla arose to dispute with it the palm of popularity.  In India, Persia, and Afghanistan, it is called chob-chini,-the “Chinese wood.”  The preparations are in two forms, 1.  Sufuf, or powder; 2.  Kahwah, or decoction.  The former is compound of Radix China Qrient, with gum mastich and sugar-candy, equal parts; about a dram of this compound is taken once a day, early in the morning.  For the decoction one ounce of fine parings is boiled for a quarter of an hour in a quart of water.  When the liquid assumes a red colour it is taken off the fire and left to cool.  Furthermore, there are two methods of adhibiting the choh-chini:  1.  Band; 2.  Khola.  The first is when the patient confines himself to a garden, listening to music, enjoying the breeze, the song of birds, and the bubbling of a flowing stream.  He avoids everything likely to trouble and annoy him; he will not even open a letter, and the doctor forbids anyone to contradict him.  Some grandees in central Asia will go through a course of forty days in every second year; it reminds one of Epicurus’ style of treatment,-the downy bed, the garlands of flowers, the good wine, and the beautiful singing girl, and is doubtless at least as efficacious in curing as the sweet relaxation of Gräfenberg or Malvern.  So says Socrates, according to the Anatomist of Melancholy, “Oculum non curabis sine toto capite, Nec caput sine toto corpore, Nec totum corpus sine animo.”  The “Khola” signifies that you take the tonic without other precautions than the avoiding acids, salt, and pepper, and choosing summer time, as cold is supposed to induce rheumatism. [FN#16] Certain Lamas who, we learn from M. Huc, perform famous Sie-fa, or supernaturalisms, such as cutting open the abdomen, licking red-hot irons, making incisions in various parts of the body, which an instant afterwards leave no trace behind, &c., &c.  The devil may “have a great deal to do with the matter” in Tartary, for all I know; but I can assure M. Huc, that the Rufa’i Darwayshes in India and the Sa’adiyah at Cairo perform exactly the same feats.  Their jugglery, seen through the smoke of incense, and amidst the enthusiasm of a crowd, is tolerably dexterous, and no more. [FN#17] A holy man.  The word has a singular signification in a plural form, “honoris causa.” [FN#18] A title literally meaning the “Master of Breath,” one who can cure ailments, physical as well as spiritual, by breathing upon them-a practice well known to mesmerists.  The reader will allow me to observe, (in self-defence, otherwise he might look suspiciously upon so credulous a narrator), that when speaking of animal magnetism, as a thing established, I allude to the lower phenomena, rejecting the discussion of all disputed points, as the existence of a magnetic Aura, and of all its unintelligibilities-Prevision, Levitation, Introvision, and other divisions of Clairvoyance. [FN#19] In the generality, not in all.  Nothing, for instance, can be more disgraceful to human nature
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Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah — Volume 1 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.