“The following case will illustrate what I mean. I had a servant named Bairou, a youth of about nineteen, who, from having been several years in the service of Europeans, had acquired a few of their notions; and, among others, had learnt to ridicule the superstitions of his countrymen. He had a sister who had been ill for several months, and no one knew what her complaint was. At his request I went to visit her more than once, but was unable to do anything for her. The fact is, my doctoring is on a very limited scale; and, as even the most eminent physicians agree that the greatest difficulty is to ascertain what is really the matter with the patient, I stood very little chance with Bairou’s sister, who complained of nothing, and showed no marked signs of ailing except in entire prostration of strength, and a rapid falling off of flesh. She gradually got worse, till one day her brother came to me and requested me to lend him my ornaments, and also to beg some more from my friends at the camp. I asked whether he was going to be ‘arkee’ to some friend about to marry; but he answered with a melancholy smile that he wanted them for his sister; as, having tried everything else, their friends had proposed to see if she were possessed, and he, though not believing in such nonsense, was willing to allow them to try the experiment, lest, if anything happened to her, they should upbraid him afterwards for having caused her death by his obstinacy and incredulity. “I, of course, quite approved of his determination, and easily succeeded in obtaining the articles required of me. She was dressed up in the borrowed finery as she lay on the couch; and at a signal the musicians outside commenced playing. At the first notes her eyes began to brighten, and, raising herself up for the first time during many days, she swayed her body to and fro for a few moments, after the manner of one possessed; but, becoming quickly exhausted, she sank back, saying, with a faint smile, ‘It is too late now!’ She repeated these words twice; they were the last I ever heard her utter. Three hours after she was a corpse. Was this, too, a sham? Or what may it be called? Possibly some freak of her disordered imagination.”[252]