A hospital—A friendly governor—A suspicious case—Superstition—The opium habit—A case of cataract—We return to England.
“By medicine life may be prolonged....
With the help of a surgeon he may yet recover.”
Shakespeare.
The last of our three years’ sojourn in Persia was spent in Yezd. Here there was already a small Mission Hospital, all the pioneer work having been done by Dr. White of the C.M.S. A wealthy Parsee merchant had presented the site for a hospital in the form of an old caravanserai (an Eastern inn). This had been gutted and made into a nice little hospital, with an out-patient department. Dr. White being on furlough, the doctor taking his place in Yezd exchanged with me, as it was hoped that my wife would be able better to stand the lower altitude of Yezd than the heights of Kerman. Yezd is an island city in a sea of sand. The waves, driven by the winds, surge against the city walls and threaten to engulf the whole place. At some parts of the wall, the drifted sand reaches almost to the level of the wall itself.
The Governor of Yezd during the time we lived there was H.R.H. Jalal-el-Dowleh, the eldest son of the Prince-Governor of Isphahan (the Zil-es-Sultan). The Jalal-el-Dowleh had the reputation, like his father, of being a strong man, and ruled with a firm hand. He had already proved a good friend to the Mission, and was accustomed to pay a state visit once yearly to the hospital, where, after being entertained at the doctor’s house, he would proceed to make a very thorough tour of inspection, and before leaving would hand the English doctor a sealed envelope containing the munificent sum of £40 as a donation. During our stay in Yezd we saw a good deal of the governor, and I had to add to my duties those of court physician.
In Yezd, as in other Persian cities, there are many quacks, who not unnaturally resent the presence of a European doctor. I had not been long in the city before I made the acquaintance of some of these gentry, in a somewhat dramatic manner.
Early one morning I was hurriedly called to the house of the chief native doctor, as his brother had been taken seriously ill.
On entering the patient’s room, I found it crowded with his friends, the patient himself lying upon a mattress placed on the ground. One glance at the patient sufficed: he was dead, and had apparently been so for some hours. When I announced the fact to the brother, he became very angry, and assured me that I was mistaken. He begged me to pour some medicine down the man’s throat, or to do something to rouse him, as he had only fainted!
Upon further inquiry, I found that he had been poorly for some days, and his brother had been treating him. My suspicions were aroused, as the brother and his friends crowded round me, imploring that English medicines should be tried, and after further careful examination only served to confirm my first opinion, I refused absolutely to comply with their entreaties, and left the house with my assistant. The brother and some of his friends pursued us, offering large fees if only we would give some medicine, absolutely refusing to accept my verdict. It is a necessary custom in Persia and the East generally, to bury a dead body within a few hours of death, but we heard that the brother refused to allow this corpse to be buried for three whole days, alleging that the English doctor was mistaken: however, in the end they were obliged to bury him. The native doctor was strongly suspected of having poisoned his brother, and this doubtless accounted for the urgent manner in which he begged me to pour something down the dead man’s throat, so that he could accuse me of being responsible for his death.