After The Rumour Spread Of The Arrival Of The Portuguese,
I Began To Be In Fear For Myself, And To
Consider what was best to be
done to ensure my safety; and considering that nothing could be easier
among these
Ignorant people than to gain a reputation of holiness by
hypocrisy, I used to lurk about the temple all day without meat, as all
the people thought, but in the night I had my fill in the house of the
two Milanese. By this device, every one took me for a saint or holy
person, so that in a few days I could go about all the city without
being suspected. To help me in this assumed character, a rich Mahometan
merchant of Calicut happened to fall sick, having his belly so
constipated that he could get no ease; and as he was a friend of my
Persian companion, and the disease daily increased, he at last asked me
if I had any skill in physic. To this I answered, that my father was a
physician, and that I had learnt many things from him. He then took me
along with him to see his friend the sick merchant, and being told that
he was very sick at the head and stomach, and sore constipated, and
having before learnt that he was a great eater and drinker, I felt his
pulse, and said that he was filled with choler or black bile, owing to
surfeiting, and that it was necessary he should have a glyster. Then I
made a glyster of eggs, salt, and sugar, together with butter and such
herbs as I could think of upon a sudden; and in the space of a day and a
night I gave him five such glysters, but all in vain, for his pains and
sickness increased, and I began to repent me of my enterprise. But it
was now necessary to put a good face on the matter, and to attempt some
other way, yet my last error seemed worse than ever. Endeavouring to
inspire him with confidence, I made him lie grovelling on his belly,
and, by cords tied to his feet, I raised up the hinder part of his body,
so that he rested only on his breast and hands; and in this posture I
administered to him another glyster, allowing him to remain in that
position for half an hour. On beholding this strange mode of practice,
my Persian friend asked me, if that was the manner of treating sick
people in my country, to which I answered that it was, but only in cases
of extremity; on which he observed with a smile, that he believed it
would certainly relieve him one way or other. In the mean time, the sick
man cried out in his own language, "It is enough, it is enough, for my
soul now departeth." We comforted him as well as we could, desiring him
to have patience yet a little longer; and almost immediately his belly
was loosened, and he voided like a gutter.
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