192 
IGNORANCE OF PERSIAN DOCTORS. 
doctors in the strongest light. One of these instances was as follows: 
The Governor of Erivanj a personage of high rank, had an only son, 
in whose welfare the King took the most lively interest; and he fell 
dangerously ill. He was placed under the care of Mirza Achmed, the 
King’s Hakim bashee, or chief physician; and the disease increasing, it 
was thought advisable to call in the aid of the English surgeons, who 
declared that they could perform a cure, if no one else interfered. 
They prescribed medicines, which the attendants promised to admi¬ 
nister ; but in the mean while Mirza Achmed had counteracted the 
effects of the European medicines by his own, which brought the child 
to the brink of the grave. It happened that the English surgeons were 
attending the child when the Mirza came in. The former said, there are 
no hopes, the child will die before to-morrow is over: the latter, in all 
the arrogance of the most profound ignorance, felt the patient’s pulse, 
and said, “ Excellent, excellent, nothing can be better; go on with my 
“ medicines, and the child will be well to-morrow.” The morrow came, 
and the Governor of Erivan’s heir was no more. Mirza Achmed attri¬ 
buted all to fate; and, like his compeers, said, when it is decided by 
God that a man is to die, no human aid can be of avail. 
Another instance occurred in the child of Mirza Yusuf, one of the 
principal Mastojis (secretaries) of the government. One of his children 
had already lost an eye by the small-pox : anxious to preserve a second 
son from a similar accident, he promised to send him to our surgeons 
to be vaccinated. They waited long for this child, but he was never 
sent. A month after, the child actually died of the small-pox. When 
he was reproached for having neglected the aid of our medical men, he 
beat his head with his hands, and exclaimed, “ Curse on my wife; she 
“ it was who hindered me from trusting to the Europeans.” 
The Ambassador, during the winter, had frequent interviews with 
the King, who conversed with him in the most familiar manner, upon 
all sorts of subjects. It happened one day that His Majesty was in 
high spirits, or as the Persians would say, damaughish chauk hud^^ and 
* This is an idiom purely Persian, for which adequate words could scarcely be found in 
