Untitled

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