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2 the unpleasant consequences which might attend his death ; but,
3 on mentioning this intention to the patient, he preferred being
4 conveyed to a friend of his, who was living at the tower called
5 Shahburj, where he himself had previously resided; which was
6 accordingly done. I gave him some remedies, and sent him
7 away ; but scarcely was he removed from the stable, when the
8 payahs (armed attendants of the durbar) appeared, summoning
9 me to present myself with the faqueer to the durbar. I stated,
10 that he had already received the reward of his insolence, and was
11 not expected to recover; but Sheer Sing, who was probably much
12 annoyed at the epithet, “ son of a laundress,” despatched several
13 messengers, ordering me to bring him to the durbar on his bed ;
14 and I was obliged^to obey. I arrived, however, too late, for the
15 assembly had already left the durbar, and Sheer Sing had departed
16 from the hazooreebagh to the interior of the fortress. On the same
17 day, the faqueer had a swelling on his knee, and diarrhoea ; but
18 he soon recovered, and afterwards proved very useful to me,
19 when I began to make my experiments with the serpents, which
20 produced so many curious results, that T sacrificed upwards of
21 two hundred fowls in less than six months. At that time poultry
22 was remarkably cheap at Lahore, the English not having yet
23 occupied that country, and four couple could be purchased for
24 one rupee. The faqueer really possessed the secret of preventing
25 his blood being affected by the bites of venomous reptiles ; and,
26 having at length succeeded in obtaining his statement of it, I
27 now present it to the public. The faqueer was an arsenic-eater,
28 and to this reason he ascribed the cause of his remaining unaffected
29 by any serpent’s venom. Perhaps he was right, because in India
30 arsenic is an ingredient in various compositions which are recom-
31 mended as remedies against the bite of serpents. He told me,
32 that during his stay under my control, he could not procure the
33 poison, and that that was the reason why the viper’s bite affected
34 him, which might possibly have been the case.
35 On my journey from Cabul to Bokhara, I met with an Affghan
36 physician and horse-dealer, travelling from Bokhara, who, it was
37 stated, consumed every day one drachm of arsenic, in order to