Apropos of this I may mention an anecdote that was related to me by Mr. Edward Zohrab, the respected Turkish Consul-General in London. This gentleman, once travelling in the interior of Turkey, had the misfortune to fall ill at a remote village where all hopes of succour were despaired of; whilst debating with the Sheikh of the village on the feasibility of despatching an express messenger to the nearest large town in search of medical aid, there arrived, most opportunely, a European traveller who had taken up his lodgings for the night at the public khan of the village; this grandee’s servant soon spread the fame of his master in the place.
“He is,” said he, “the only learned Frank physician in Turkey. He has been _hakeem_ to all the great _pad-shahs_ of Europe, and is only travelling here to find some rare drugs and medicinal stones for the great emperor of Moscof.”
“Is he?” said the delighted Sheikh, who had rushed to seek aid from the stranger. “Then for Allah’s sake bring him with all speed to my residence; for there is a _miri liwa_ dying there of fever; and if anything happens in my house what’s to become of me and my family?”
The learned physician accompanied the Sheikh to his house, and in him Mr. Zohrab discovered, to his utter amazement and discomfort, the person of a once respectable Italian ship-chandler who had carried on business some years back at Constantinople, but who, subsequently failing, had donned the cap and cloak of a mountebank, and went about quacking the natives. It is needless to say that the discomfited doctor made a precipitate retreat from the village. But to return to the subject after this digression, the good done by the American physician was peculiarly instanced in my own family.
A very near relative lay grievously ill at Beyrout—every effort of the native _hakeem_ to give him sleep proved abortive. Native astrologers came, and writing down the names and number of letters in each name of the patient and of his mother, multiplied and divided the sum total, and then tearing up the paper into fine shreds, swallowed the whole; but even this magic failed. After much discussion, it was finally determined, much to the disgust of my clerical uncle, to summon the American doctor, with whom or with whose brethren my family had heretofore carefully avoided intercourse.