1 ■50
2 was the very place where T at first practised, and it was
3 there I gave lessons in pharmacy and chymistry to the fakirs
4 Aziz-oo-Deen and Noor-oo-Deen. The spirit produced from
5 Cabul grapes, for the use of Runjeet Sing, was distilled in that
6 place in my presence, by his own people, because every thing
7 eatable or drinkable, destined for the Sikhs and Hindoos, must
8 be prepared with their own hands, no Christian or Musselman
9 being permitted to touch it, lest they should pollute it.
10 There were also the royal magazines, under the care of Noor-oo-
11 Deen, where I prepared different opiates, and many amusing
12 metallic oxydes (kooshtegee), to please the fakir and Runjeet
13 Sing, for which they held me in high estimation. Among others,
14 I prepared some morphine, with a large dose of which the Maha-
15 rajah would surely have killed a famous opium-eater, if I had
16 not been consulted in time, and administered to him some anti-
17 dotes. I thought it strange that no one at Lahore was aware of
18 the existence of coffee, and its usefulness Even the learned
19 fakirs, Aziz-oo-Deen and Noor-oo-Deen (brothers), who were of
20 Arab descent, knew coffee only from their books, under the de-
21 nomination of bun , and the sample which I showed them in 1832,
22 in the Durbar, was the first they had ever seen ; but when the
23 English arrived it became generally known. Neither had they
24 any notion of our cantharides ; for which they substitute meloe
25 telini , a fly of greater efficacy, containing more cantharidine than
26 cantharides. They are seldom employed by the native physicians
27 for blistering, although they know the utility of them in cases of
28 hydrophobia.
29 Besides what had been mentioned on the effects of blistering
30 in the description of my own disease, the following may likewise
31 serve as a proof how beneficial that process is when properly
32 employed, and it may, in some cases, even save a patient’s
33 life.
34 General C , had brought on a disease, by an external mis-
35 application of mercury, while he was with the court at Umritsir.
36 It was in the warm season, and on the fourth day after the appli-
37 cation, he became so indisposed that my services were called into