“Chai, sahib” (tea, sir); and a lordly individual, with huge mustachios, a black lambskin cap, a brown cloth inner coat, a blue cloth outer coat, a broad belt, and a long “kummer” (or straight broad-bladed sword), dark-blue “shulwar” (what an American calls pants, and an outfitter pyjamas), and his stockinged feet—his shoes were outside my door—places a cup of tea, some twice-baked sweet biscuit, of delicious crispness, and some marmalade, at my side, and departs. He soon returns with a second cup of tea and a kalian.
As I am a griffin, he draws my attention to the latter being—“Welly good thing, kalian.”
He then goes through a pantomime suggesting sleep, talking all the time to me in Persian. I take his advice.
At eight he wakes me, and I find he has a warm tub ready for me. I dress once again in the clothes of ordinary life, and go down, to find no one about, for Major S⸺ has gone to the office, and taken the Colonel with him.
However, my especial chief, Mr. B⸺, soon appears, accompanied by his big black dog “Topsy,” who comes into all the rooms and sits on all the settees: there is a fine sense of liberty in this. Mr. B⸺ warns me that I must not hope to make anything by practice—that he never did, and I never shall; but that there is a fine field for gratuitous work.
He then explains to me the Persian system of medicine. It has its advantages in its delightful simplicity. All diseases are cold or hot. All remedies are hot or cold. A hot disease requires a cold remedy, and vice-versâ.
Now, if the Persian doctor is called in, and has any doubt as to the nature of the disorder, he prescribes a hot remedy, let us say; if the patient gets better, he was right; if worse, then he prescribes a cold remedy, and sticks to it. He thus gets over all need for diagnosis, all physiological treatment, and he cannot, according to his own lights, be wrong.
His prescriptions contain a multitude of mostly obsolete and inert drugs, ten being a small number of ingredients, twenty an ordinary one. Before he is summoned, an omen is taken by the patient and his friends, as to who shall be called in; when he has seen his patient, another is taken, as to whether his advice shall be followed or not. His fee is a few pence, or more generally he undertakes the case on speculation; so much—of which he is lucky if he gets half—if the patient gets well; nothing if he doesn’t.
Most of the relatives, friends, and neighbours prescribe various homely, or at times, powerful remedies, which are all as a rule tried.