An Epistle containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish,
the Arab Physician.



Karshish, the Arab physician, has been journeying in quest of knowledge
pertaining to his art, and writes to his all-sagacious master, Abib,
ostensibly about the specimens he has gathered of medicinal plants
and minerals, and the observations he has made; but his real interest,
which he endeavors to conceal by passing to matters of
greater import to him, as he would have his sage at home believe,
is in what he pronounces "a case of mania, subinduced by epilepsy".
His last letter brought his journeyings to Jericho. He is now on his
way to Jerusalem, and has reached Bethany, where he passes the night.

The case of mania which so interests him, -- far more than he is
willing to admit, -- is that of Lazarus, whose firm conviction rests
that he was dead (in fact they buried him) and then restored to life
by a Nazarene physician of his tribe, who afterwards perished
in a tumult. The man Lazarus is witless, he writes, of the relative
value of all things. Vast armaments assembled to besiege his city,
and the passing of a mule with gourds, are all one to him;
while at some trifling fact, he'll gaze, rapt with stupor,
as if it had for him prodigious import. Should his child sicken
unto death, why look for scarce abatement of his cheerfulness,
or suspension of his daily craft; while a word, gesture, or glance
from that same child at play or laid asleep, will start him to
an agony of fear, exasperation, just as like! The law of the life,