Court Life in China: The Capital, Its Officials and PeopleHeadland, Isaac Taylor
History
Court Life in China: The Capital, Its Officials and People
Headland, Isaac Taylor
China -- Court and courtiers; Cixi, Empress dowager of China, 1835-1908; Empresses -- China -- Biography; Women -- China
I explained the nature of the operation necessary, and gave them every
reason to hope for a speedy recovery, while without surgical treatment
she must surely die. They consented and the operation was successful.
She recovered rapidly for a few days until I regarded her as
practically out of danger. But one day when I called I found her bathed
in perspiration, shaking with fear, weeping and depressed. Her wound
was in an excellent condition and I could find no reason for her
despondency. I cheered her up, laughed and talked with her, gave her
such articles of diet as she craved, and left her happy. The next day I
again found her in the same nervous condition.
"Something is wrong with your mother of which you have not told me," I
said to her son.
"Before we sent for you," he said, "we had called a spirit doctor, who
went into a sort of trance, claimed to have descended into the spirit
world where he saw them making a coffin which he said my mother would
occupy before the fifteenth of the month. It is because that time is
approaching that she is filled with fear."
I talked with the lady, showed her how her wound was healing,
encouraged her to rest easy until the fifteenth, when I would spend the
day with her, after which she immediately began gaining strength and
soon recovered.
At another time I was called to see the wife of the president of the
Board of Punishments. I found an operation necessary. The next day I
found the patient delirious with a fever, and asked the husband if my
directions had been followed.
"I assure you they have," he answered. "But the cause of the fever is
this: Last evening while the servants were taking their meal she was
left alone for a short time. While they were absent, her sister who
lived on this street, a short distance from here, committed suicide.
When the servant discovered it she ran directly to my wife's room, and
told her of the tragedy. My wife began to tremble, had a severe chill,
and soon became delirious. I suspect that her sister's spirit
accompanied the servant and entered my wife."
In spite of this explanation I cleaned and dressed the wound and left
her more comfortable. The next morning she was somewhat better, without
fever and in her right mind.
"What kind of a night did she have?" I asked her husband.
"Oh, very good," he answered. "I managed to get the spirit out of her."
"How did you do it?" I inquired.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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