When you are very ill, Mother keeps you very quiet and does not let you see visitors, but when a little Persian is very ill all the neighbours crowd in to see him, and the more ill he is the more people come in. And they do not tread on tiptoe and talk in a whisper, they all talk quite loud out and smoke qaliāns and drink tea, and make noise enough to give anyone in good health a headache, much more a sick child.
One day I was called in to see a child who was dangerously ill. Instead of showing me into her room, the mother, together with a variety of aunts, sisters, and other relations, escorted me to their receiving-room. I asked for the sick child, and was told I should see her after tea, which meant at least half an hour’s delay. As the account they had given of her sounded very bad, I said I could not wait, that it was not our custom to think of tea-drinking and entertainment when our patients were perhaps dying. With great difficulty I managed to persuade them to take me to the poor little girl, whom they had left alone while they all came to have tea and sweets with me. She was, as they had said, very ill, her recovery was very doubtful, yet as soon as we left the room, and had sent for the medicine, they were all eager to entertain me, and I do not think anyone would have stayed with the child if I had not insisted, and they were all as gay and lively as if they had had no one dangerously ill in the next room.
The Persians are very hospitable and like to put their best before a visitor, and they consider it very necessary to provide something nice for the doctor. Some Persian doctors send word beforehand what refreshments they would like got ready.
Sometimes this deters the very poor from calling in even the mission doctor, who, they know, would treat them free. They cannot even provide tea and sugar. It was a great relief to more than one poor person, when it was discovered that the mission ladies were fond of boiled turnips, for a plate of turnips was within the reach of the poorest, costing only about a halfpenny. The news spread, and several sick people were able at once to have a doctor.
But it is in surgery that one sees the Persian doctor at his worst.
Here comes little Husain with his head plastered up with mud; on removing the mud we find a broken skull and a large wound in a foul condition. Next comes little Sakīneh with both hands burnt; the burns are smeared with sticky white of egg covered over with leaves; it will take days of proper dressing to get the wounds clean. But she is not so badly off as Rubābeh, whose burn has been dressed with camphorated oil, and is so inflamed that she screams and cries the whole time.
A more fortunate child was the little girl who was scalded nearly all over, but not deeply, and who looked like a little nigger with the ink they had put on. She got well very quickly. It is like Indian ink, and seems to be the best of the remedies the Persians use for burns.
With broken bones the Persian doctors are not very successful either. Little Hasan, aged four, fell and broke both arms. The Persian doctor as usual tied them up with splints that were too small to be any real use, but he tried to make up for that by tying the bandages very tight, and poor little Hasan had both arms partly destroyed. How proud he was when, after some weeks at the C.M.S. hospital, he was able to carry an English doll clasped to his heart with the two poor bandaged stumps.
There was some truth in what one doctor said, that more than half the cases that came into the hospital had come there in consequence of the Persian doctors’ treatment. The remedy is generally worse than the disease.
There are exceptions, and I have met Persian doctors, who not only had real knowledge of medical treatment, but had some of the true doctor’s spirit of pity and self-sacrifice. Especially I would mention the brave Persian doctor who stayed at his post in Shiraz in the cholera epidemic of 1904, and fought that terrible disease instead of yielding to the panic that had seized his fellow countrymen.