Men and Women (Browning)/Volume 1/An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician
AN EPISTLE
CONTAINING THE
STRANGE MEDICAL EXPERIENCE OF KARSHISH, THE ARAB PHYSICIAN.
Karshish, the picker-up of learning's crumbs,The not-incurious in God's handiwork(This man's-flesh he hath admirably made,Blown like a bubble, kneaded like a paste,To coop up and keep down on earth a spaceThat puff of vapour from his mouth, man's soul)—To Abib, all-sagacious in our art,Breeder in me of what poor skill I boast,Like me inquisitive how pricks and cracksBefall the flesh through too much stress and strain,Whereby the wily vapour fain would slip Back and rejoin its source before the term,—And aptest in contrivance, under God,To baffle it by deftly stopping such:—The vagrant Scholar to his Sage at homeSends greeting (health and knowledge, fame with peace)Three samples of true snake-stone—rarer still,One of the other sort, the melon-shaped,(But fitter, pounded fine, for charms than drugs)And writeth now the twenty-second time.
My journeyings were brought to Jericho,Thus I resume. Who studious in our artShall count a little labour unrepaid?I have shed sweat enough, left flesh and boneOn many a flinty furlong of this land.Also the country-side is all on fireWith rumours of a marching hitherward—Some say Vespasian cometh, some, his son.A black lynx snarled and pricked a tufted ear; Lust of my blood inflamed his yellow balls:I cried and threw my staff and he was gone.Twice have the robbers stripped and beaten me,And once a town declared me for a spy,But at the end, I reach Jerusalem,Since this poor covert where I pass the night,This Bethany, lies scarce the distance thenceA man with plague-sores at the third degreeRuns till he drops down dead. Thou laughest here!'Sooth, it elates me, thus reposed and safe,To void the stuffing of my travel-scripAnd share with thee whatever Jewry yieldsA viscid choler is observableIn tertians, I was nearly bold to say,And falling-sickness hath a happier cureThan our school wots of: there's a spider hereWeaves no web, watches on the ledge of tombs,Sprinkled with mottles on an ash-grey back;Take five and drop them . . . but who knows his mind,The Syrian run-a-gate I trust this to? His service payeth me a sublimateBlown up his nose to help the ailing eye.Best wait: I reach Jerusalem at morn,There set in order my experiences,Gather what most deserves, and give thee all—Or I might add, Judea's gum-tragacanthScales off in purer flakes, shines clearer-grained,Cracks 'twixt the pestle and the porphyry,In fine exceeds our produce. Scalp-diseaseConfounds me, crossing so with leprosy—Thou hadst admired one sort I gained at Zoar—But zeal outruns discretion. Here I end.
Yet stay: my Syrian blinketh gratefully,Protesteth his devotion is my price—Suppose I write what harms not, though he steal?I half resolve to tell thee, yet I blush,What set me off a-writing first of all.An itch I had, a sting to write, a tang!For, be it this town's barrenness—or else The Man had something in the look of him—His case has struck me far more than 'tis worth.So, pardon if—(lest presently I loseIn the great press of novelty at handThe care and pains this somehow stole from me)I bid thee take the thing while fresh in mind,Almost in sight—for, wilt thou have the truth?The very man is gone from me but now,Whose ailment is the subject of discourse.Thus then, and let thy better wit help all.
'Tis but a case of mania—subinducedBy epilepsy, at the turning-pointOf trance prolonged unduly some three days,When by the exhibition of some drugOr spell, exorcisation, stroke of artUnknown to me and which 'twere well to know,The evil thing out-breaking all at onceLeft the man whole and sound of body indeed,—But, flinging, so to speak, life's gates too wide, Making a clear house of it too suddenly,The first conceit that entered pleased to writeWhatever it was minded on the wallSo plainly at that vantage, as it were,(First come, first served) that nothing subsequentAttaineth to erase the fancy-scrawlsWhich the returned and new-established soulHath gotten now so thoroughly by heartThat henceforth she will read or these or none.And first—the man's own firm conviction restsThat he was dead (in fact they buried him)That he was dead and then restored to lifeBy a Nazarene physician of his tribe:—'Sayeth, the same bade "Rise," and he did rise."Such cases are diurnal," thou wilt cry.Not so this figment!—not, that such a fume,Instead of giving way to time and health,Should eat itself into the life of life,As saffron tingeth flesh, blood, bones and all!For see, how he takes up the after-life. The man—it is one Lazarus a Jew,Sanguine, proportioned, fifty years of age,The body's habit wholly laudable,As much, indeed, beyond the common healthAs he were made and put aside to shew.Think, could we penetrate by any drugAnd bathe the wearied soul and worried flesh,And bring it clear and fair, by three days sleep!Whence has the man the balm that brightens all?This grown man eyes the world now like a child.Some elders of his tribe, I should premise,Led in their friend, obedient as a sheep,To bear my inquisition. While they spoke,Now sharply, now with sorrow,—told the case,—He listened not except I spoke to him,But folded his two hands and let them talk,Watching the flies that buzzed: and yet no fool.And that's a sample how his years must go.Look if a beggar, in fixed middle-life,Should find a treasure, can he use the same With straightened habits and with tastes starved small,And take at once to his impoverished brainThe sudden element that changes things,—That sets the undreamed-of rapture at his hand,And puts the cheap old joy in the scorned dust?Is he not such an one as moves to mirth—Warily parsimonious, when's no need,Wasteful as drunkenness at undue times?All prudent counsel as to what befitsThe golden mean, is lost on such an one.The man's fantastic will is the man's law.So here—we'll call the treasure knowledge, say—Increased beyond the fleshly faculty—Heaven opened to a soul while yet on earth,Earth forced on a soul's use while seeing Heaven.The man is witless of the size, the sum,The value in proportion of all things,Or whether it be little or be much.Discourse to him of prodigious armamentsAssembled to besiege his city now, And of the passing of a mule with gourds—'Tis one! Then take it on the other side,Speak of some trifling fact—he will gaze raptWith stupor at its very littleness—(Far as I see) as if in that indeedHe caught prodigious import, whole results;And so will turn to us the bystandersIn ever the same stupor (note this point)That we too see not with his opened eyes!Wonder and doubt come wrongly into play,Preposterously, at cross purposes.Should his child sicken unto death,—why, lookFor scarce abatement of his cheerfulness,Or pretermission of his daily craft—While a word, gesture, glance, from that same childAt play or in the school or laid asleep,Will start him to an agony of fear,Exasperation, just as like! demandThe reason why—"'tis but a word," object—"A gesture"—he regards thee as our lord Who lived there in the pyramid alone,Looked at us, dost thou mind, when being youngWe both would unadvisedly reciteSome charm's beginning, from that book of his,Able to bid the sun throb wide and burstAll into stars, as suns grown old are wont.Thou and the child have each a veil alikeThrown o'er your heads from under which ye bothStretch your blind hands and trifle with a matchOver a mine of Greek fire, did ye know!He holds on firmly to some thread of life—(It is the life to lead perforcedly)Which runs across some vast distracting orbOf glory on either side that meagre thread,Which, conscious of, he must not enter yet—The spiritual life around the earthly life!The law of that is known to him as this—His heart and brain move there, his feet stay here.So is the man perplext with impulsesSudden to start off crosswise, not straight on, Proclaiming what is Right and Wrong across—And not along—this black thread through the blaze—"It should be" balked by "here it cannot be."And oft the man's soul springs into his faceAs if he saw again and heard againHis sage that bade him "Rise" and he did rise.Something—a word, a tick of the blood withinAdmonishes—then back he sinks at onceTo ashes, that was very fire before,In sedulous recurrence to his tradeWhereby he earneth him the daily bread—And studiously the humbler for that pride,Professedly the faultier that he knowsGod's secret, while he holds the thread of life.Indeed the especial marking of the manIs prone submission to the Heavenly will—Seeing it, what it is, and why it is.'Sayeth, he will wait patient to the lastFor that same death which will restore his beingTo equilibrium, body loosening soul Divorced even now by premature full growth:He will live, nay, it pleaseth him to liveSo long as God please, and just how God please.He even seeketh not to please God more(Which meaneth, otherwise) than as God please.Hence I perceive not he affects to preachThe doctrine of his sect whate'er it be—Make proselytes as madmen thirst to do.How can he give his neighbour the real ground,His own conviction? ardent as he is—Call his great truth a lie, why still the old"Be it as God please" reassureth him.I probed the sore as thy disciple should—"How, beast," said I, "this stolid carelessnessSufficeth thee, when Rome is on her marchTo stamp out like a little spark thy town,Thy tribe, thy crazy tale and thee at once?"He merely looked with his large eyes on me.The man is apathetic, you deduce?Contrariwise he loves both old and young, Able and weak—affects the very brutesAnd birds—how say I? flowers of the field—As a wise workman recognises toolsIn a master's workshop, loving what they make.Thus is the man as harmless as a lamb:Only impatient, let him do his best,At ignorance and carelessness and sin—An indignation which is promptly curbed.As when in certain travels I have feignedTo be an ignoramus in our artAccording to some preconceived design,And happed to hear the land's practitionersSteeped in conceit sublimed by ignorance,Prattle fantastically on disease,Its cause and cure—and I must hold my peace!
Thou wilt object—why have I not ere thisSought out the sage himself, the NazareneWho wrought this cure, enquiring at the source,Conferring with the frankness that befits? Alas! it grieveth me, the learned leechPerished in a tumult many years ago,Accused,—our learning's fate,—of wizardry,Rebellion, to the setting up a ruleAnd creed prodigious as described to me.His death which happened when the earthquake fell(Prefiguring, as soon appeared, the lossTo occult learning in our lord the sageThat lived there in the pyramid alone)Was wrought by the mad people—that's their wont—On vain recourse, as I conjecture it,To his tried virtue, for miraculous help—How could he stop the earthquake? That's their way!The other imputations must be lies:But take one—though I loathe to give it thee,In mere respect to any good man's fame!(And after all our patient LazarusIs stark mad—should we count on what he says?Perhaps not—though in writing to a leech'Tis well to keep back nothing of a case.) This man so cured regards the curer then,As—God forgive me—who but God himself,Creator and Sustainer of the world,That came and dwelt in flesh on it awhile!—'Sayeth that such an One was born and lived,Taught, healed the sick, broke bread at his own house,Then died, with Lazarus by, for aught I know,And yet was . . . what I said nor choose repeat,And must have so avouched himself, in fact,In hearing of this very LazarusWho saith—but why all this of what he saith?Why write of trivial matters, things of priceCalling at every moment for remark?I noticed on the margin of a poolBlue-flowering borage, the Aleppo sort,Aboundeth, very nitrous. It is strange!
Thy pardon for this long and tedious case,Which, now that I review it, needs must seemUnduly dwelt on, prolixly set forth. Nor I myself discern in what is writGood cause for the peculiar interestAnd awe indeed this man has touched me with.Perhaps the journey's end, the wearinessHad wrought upon me first. I met him thus—I crossed a ridge of short sharp broken hillsLike an old lion's cheek-teeth. Out there cameA moon made like a face with certain spotsMultiform, manifold, and menacing:Then a wind rose behind me. So we metIn this old sleepy town at unaware,The man and I. I send thee what is writ.Regard it as a chance, a matter riskedTo this ambiguous Syrian—he may lose,Or steal, or give it thee with equal good.Jerusalem's repose shall make amendsFor time this letter wastes, thy time and mine,Till when, once more thy pardon and farewell!
The very God! think, Abib; dost thou think? So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too—So, through the thunder comes a human voiceSaying, "O heart I made, a heart beats here!Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself.Thou hast no power nor may'st conceive of mine,But love I gave thee, with Myself to love,And thou must love me who have died for thee!"The madman saith He said so: it is strange.