Whilst at Bijnore, I was seized with an attack of tic-douloureux, and suffered all its extreme agonies. One of my host's servants informed me that there was a very clever native doctor in the village, who could immediately assuage any pain--tooth-ache, for instance--and he begged permission to bring him to see me. I consented.
The native doctor was a tall, thin Mussulman, with a lofty forehead, small black eyes, long aquiline nose, and finely chiselled mouth and chin. His hair, eye-brows, and long beard were of a yellowish white, or cream colour. Standing before me in his skull-cap, he was about the most singular looking person I ever beheld. His age did not exceed forty-four or forty-five years. He put several questions to me, but I was in too great pain to give him any replies. He begged of me to sit down. I obeyed him, mechanically. Seating himself in a chair immediately opposite to me, he looked very intently into my eyes. After a little while, his gaze became disagreeable, and I endeavoured to turn my head aside, but I was unable to do so. I now felt that I was being mesmerized. Observing, I suppose, an expression of anxiety, if not of fear, on my features, he bade me not to be alarmed. I longed to order him to cease; but, as the pain was becoming less and less acute, and as I retained my consciousness intact, I suffered him to proceed. To tell the truth, I doubt whether I could have uttered a sound. At all events, I did not make the attempt. Presently, that is to say, after two or three minutes, the pain had entirely left me, and I felt what is commonly called, all in a glow. The native doctor now removed his eyes from off mine, and inquired if I were better. My reply, which I had no difficulty in giving at once, was in the affirmative; in short, that I was completely cured. Observing that he placed his hands over his head, and pressed his skull, I asked him if he were suffering.
"Yes, slightly," was his reply; "but I am so accustomed to it, it gives me but little inconvenience."
I then begged of him to explain to me how it was that he had the power to afford me such miraculous relief. That, he said, he was unable to do. He did not know. I then talked to him of mesmerism and of the wonderful performances of Dr. Esdaile, in the Calcutta hospital. He had lately heard of mesmerism, he said; but, years before he heard of it, he was in the habit of curing people by assuaging their pain. The gift had been given to him soon after he attained manhood. That, with one exception, and that was in the case of a Keranee--a half-caste--no patient had ever fallen asleep, or had become beehosh (unconscious), under his gaze. "The case of the half-caste," he went on to say, "alarmed me. He fell asleep, and slept for twelve hours, snoring like a man in a state of intoxication." I was not the first European he had operated upon, he said; that in Bareilly, where he formerly lived, he had afforded relief to many officers and to several ladies. Some had tooth-ache, some tic-douloureux, some other pains. "But," he exclaimed, energetically, "the most extraordinary case I ever had, was that of a Sahib who had gone mad--'drink delirious.' His wife would not suffer him to be strapped down, and he was so violent that it took four or five other Sahibs to hold him. I was sent for, and, at first, had great difficulty with him and much trembling. At last, however, I locked his eyes up, as soon as I got him to look at me, and kept him for several hours as quiet as a mouse, during which time he had no brandy, no wine, no beer; and, though he did not sleep, he had a good long rest. I stayed with him for two days, and whatever I told him to do he did immediately. He had great sorrow on his mind, poor man. Three of his children had died of fever within one short week, and he had lost much money by the failure of an agency-house in Calcutta. There was a cattle serjeant, too, an European, whom I also cured of that drinking madness by locking up his eyes."