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AL-MAJUSI CURES A PLETHORIC PORTER<br />
t<br />
.. .<br />
><br />
and consideration,) so that they could do nothing. Then the<br />
physician ordered his servant to take hold of' the tjirban 'which<br />
he had twisted round his neck, to mount his horse, and to drag -*<br />
the porter after him round the plain.' The servant did as he was '<br />
'<br />
'<br />
bid, and made him ru>j far afield, so that blood began to flow<br />
"<br />
from his nostrils. No^," said the physician,. "let him be." So<br />
he was let alone, and there continued to flow from him blood<br />
stinking worse than carrion. The man fell asleep amidst the<br />
1<br />
blood which flowed from his nose, and three hundred dirhams<br />
weight of blood escaped from his nostrils ere the haemorrhage<br />
ceased. They then lifted him up and bore him thence to his<br />
house, and he never woke, but slept for a day and a night, and<br />
his headache* passecl away and never again returned or required<br />
treatment. ,<br />
Theq 'Adudu'd-Dawla questioned the physjcian as to the<br />
rationale of this treatment. " O King," he replied, " that blood<br />
ip his brain was not a matter which could be eliminated by an<br />
aperient<br />
than that which I adopted."<br />
of aloes 1<br />
, and there was no other method of treatment<br />
(AT) ANECDOTE XXXVIII.<br />
Melancholia is a disease which physicians often fail to treat<br />
successfully, for, though all diseases arising<br />
are chronic, melancholia is a pathological condition which is<br />
especially slow to pass. Abu'l-Hasan ibn Yahya 2 in his work<br />
entitled the "<br />
Hippocratic Therapeutics "<br />
91<br />
from the black bile<br />
(Mu'dlaja-i-Buqrdtz\<br />
a book the like of which hath been composed by no one on<br />
the Art of Medicine, hath enumerated the leaders of thought,<br />
sages, scholars and philosophers who have been afflicted t?y tnis<br />
disease.<br />
My master the Shaykh Abu Ja'far ibn Muhammad Abu<br />
Sa'd 3<br />
[al-Nashaw^i] 4<br />
, commonly known as Sarakh 5<br />
related to , me,<br />
on 'the authority of, the Imam Shaykh Muhammad ibn 'Aqi'l<br />
al<br />
Qazwini, on the authority of the Amir Fakhru'd-Dawla Abu<br />
Kalanjar the Buyid as follows :<br />
"One of the princes of the ,House of Buya was attacked by<br />
melancholy, and was in such wise affected by the disease that<br />
1<br />
Aydraj or Yarn is a ccynpound medicine of a purgative or alterative character.<br />
The kind called Jiqrd (from the Greek iriKpa) has aloes as its principal active in-<br />
gredienl,,<br />
, *-See Brockelmann's Gesch. d. Arab. Lift., vol. i, p. 237, and p. Co r of the Persian<br />
notes. He gives his own name in full as Abu'l-Hasan Ahmad ibn Muhammad at-<br />
Tabari, He ^yas court physician to the Bviyid prince Ruknu'd-Dawla from A.H. 332<br />
(A. D." 943-4) onwards. MSS. of the work cited exist at Oxford, Munich, and irthe<br />
Tjidia Office.<br />
3 A. has Sa'df.<br />
4 This nisba occurs only in L.<br />
5 So all texts, p-j*o, a form hitherto unexplained.<br />
k<br />
1