“Enquire if His Highness wishes to place himself under my medical care.”
His Highness, turning his head and looking at me, said, “Bâli! I wish it.”
I laid down my turban, removed the spurs from my boots, and set to work to examine His Highness’s condition.
Illness of the Amîr.
He had acute gouty inflammation of the right shoulder, elbow, wrist, and knee, and shooting neuralgic pains in the left calf. There was coarse crepitation of the left axillary base, with cough; some enlargement of the heart; extreme vesical irritability, and faucial congestion; and albuminuria to the extent roughly of a fifth. His temperature was 102 degrees Fahr.: the pulse weak; and I was informed that he had had no sleep for several nights.
I sat down a minute to consider what I would do. The condition was serious: for the Amîr had been ill, on and off, to my knowledge, since September the 9th, and possibly longer. The medical treatment to which he had been subjected by the Hakims for his complaint was, to my mind, unscientific, and even dangerous. He had been bled, I was informed, nearly to faintness, and leeched freely several times: he had been purged violently and often: and his gouty foot had been plunged into iced water. What else was done I do not know; but this was enough.
A lantern being procured, I went at once to the Hospital, which is at the edge of the Palace gardens, and obtained such medicines as I needed. I was accompanied by the Hindustani Priest-doctor, who was accused of murdering his Superior Officer in India, and who, as I have mentioned, was not under my orders. We returned to the Palace, and the medicines were placed in charge of a trusted Page.
I weighed and measured the medicines in suitable doses, and when they were dissolved I handed the glass to His Highness. It did not enter my head to taste a dose of the medicine in front of His Highness, nor did he ever require me to do so. His Highness took the glass, and, murmuring,
“In the name of God—the merciful and compassionate,” he drank the contents.
I fomented the inflamed joints with hot water, applying suitable medicines, and finally bandaged them gently in cotton-wool and tissue. I then requested as many as I could ask, to withdraw, in the hope that His Highness might sleep; and I went into an adjoining room. I did not give His Highness any opiate or other sleeping draught, wishing rather to trust to the effect of the medicines I had given him. I ought to say that His Highness, with a courtesy that never leaves him, gave orders for meals and suitable accommodation for sleeping to be prepared for me in the adjoining room or alcove. In half-an-hour His Highness slept. The Princes left very quietly about two hours afterwards.