Digital Rare Book:
Thirty-five years in the East. Adventures, discoveries, experiments, and historical sketches, relating to the Punjab and Cashmere; in connection with medicine, botany, pharmacy, etc
By John Martin Honigberger (1795-1869)
Late Physician to The Court of Lahore
Published by H.Bailliere, London - 1852

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Book extract:

Arrived at Lahore, I found my former patron, the maharajah, Runjeet Sing, seated on a chair, with swollen feet, and making himself understood by gestures and signs with his hands ; his organs of speech being paralysed to such a degree, that he was not able to utter a single articulate sound, and other means of imparting his thoughts were not in his possession, as he never had learned to write.

From time to time I had occasion to relate many of the cures effected by the new method of homoeopathy, by the aid of which I had cured myself in Vienna of the cholera and lately in Hindoostan of the plague. Although they did not doubt the truth of my assertions, it was not without difficulty that they could prevail on themselves to trust me with the treatment of the maharajah, because the favourable season — it being spring — allowed the native physicians to rely on other trials which they had to make : meanwhile I succeeded in some homoeopathic cures quite to my satisfaction. But the greatest sensation produced,was by a cure which I undertook at the request of the minister, raja Dhyan Sing. He committed to my medical care a native of Cashmere, Aboo Ibrahim, commander of his jesails ( camel-artillery ), in whose head, ten years previously, a bullet had been lodged at an affair with the Affghans, and which no native surgeon had been able to extract, and in consequence he was paralysed on one sideI trepanned him, and extracted the bullet which was stuck beneath the skull, anH pressed the brain, without, however, affectiag that organ. My patient having been a drunkard, and troubled with indigestion in consequence of his weakened stomach, I administered to him some physic, to accelerate his recovery ; and I succeeded in restoring him to perfect health, in the short space of two months. When relieved from his hemiplegy, I presented him to the minister, and he introduced him to the maharaja.

Image:
Emily EDEN
Maharaja Ranjit Singh, hand-coloured lithograph,

Source: Sotheby's