Sri Aurobindo - The Smiling Master

Chapter 5

On Matters ''Medical''

Medicines and the medical profession, physicians and surgeons, their diagnoses, prescriptions and operation procedures, have all provided a hunting-ground for the humorists to pick their games from. As Sri Aurobindo pointed out to his doctor-disciple, "the temptation of a joke at doctors has always been too much for any lay resistance."¹ Here are a few typical humorous anecdotes concerning the disciples of Hippocrates and Dhanwantari.

(1)Dr. so and so had a fancy to visit a far-off village and dwell there for a month in the midst of the simple village-folk. When the time came for his departure back, - and the doctor was very happy with his sojourn, — the benevolent physician opened his medicine-chest, brought out some bottles containing patent medicines and offered one bottle each to all those who were standing near by. The villagers protested: "Why, sir? We have no sicknesses!" The sympathetic doctor replied: "Don't worry, don't worry, friends; you'll surely have, once you take my medicines."

(2)A village doctor, almost a quack, was treating somebody for his lingering illness "diagnosed" as typhoid. When no improvement was noted even after many days, the poor patient murmured: "Doctor Sahib, don't you think my disease may be pneumonia and not typhoid?" The physician thundered: "Why this doubt, my good fellow?" "Because, Doctor Sa'b, Haripada, my neighbour, was recently treated by Dr. Dhurandhar for his supposed typhoid but the poor fellow died. And after death it was found on autopsy that Haripada had suffered from pneumonia and not from typhoid." At this our doctor jumped up from his seat and gave a bull-throated shout: "To hell with Dhurandhar-Phurandhar! On my part, when I have declared

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you have typhoid, you have to die of typhoid and not of pneumonia!"

(3)This third anecdote relates to a surgeon. The patient was laid upon the operation table and the young surgeon approached him. In a broken voice the trembling patient murmured: "Surgeon Sa'b, fear grips me." The surgeon cleared his throat and enquired: "Why, why, why are you afraid?" "This is my first operation, Sahib!" The trepidant surgeon ready with his scalpel whispered: "So is it mine, good fellow. You have expressed my own feeling."

(4)Now about a veteran surgeon. Before starting the surgical operation this surgeon, in a grave and solemn voice, addressed the patient: "Your case is very serious. Nine out of ten patients suffering from the same ailment expire after the operation." On hearing these ominous words, the patient started shaking with fear. But the surgeon consoled him: "No fear, no fear, my friend. For, the last nine patients I have operated on have all died; yours is the tenth case. So, logically, you will survive my operation."

We leave it to our readers to imagine how the patient reacted to this added piece of information coming from the lips of the much-practising surgeon!

(5)Now a piece of American joke with its habitual dig at the pre-Gorbachevian system prevailing in the Soviet Union.

An American surgeon was on a visit to a reputed Moscow hospital. He saw there the Soviet doctors doing many difficult and complicated operations with great skill and expertise: the bio-medical technologies involved were surprisingly hyper-modern and the procedures adopted were far superior to those employed in the United States. The American surgeon was deeply impressed. Full of admiration he then proceeded to the ENT theatre. He saw there a team of Russian surgeons engrossed in a surgical operation: the patient was lying unconscious on the table and a very large portion of his neck just

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below his left ear was found cut open. The American doctor enquired: "Tell me, prithee, what is this operation for? What surgical ailment does the patient have in his ear?" The taciturn chief of the team of Russian surgeons replied: "Nothing in his ear." "Then?" The Soviet surgeon replied: "We have been operating on the tonsils of his throat." Terribly puzzled the visiting American exclaimed: "Tonsilitis? If so, why are you cutting his ear?" The Russian surgeon kept quiet for some time and then whispered to the American: "This is the only feasible way of doing tonsilitis operation here; for, in our country the rule is that none should open one's mouth."

(6) Here is a piece of jolly good joke playing upon the popularly averred mutual distrust and recrimination found amongst the practitioners of medicine.

Dr. White could not in any way tolerate the presence of Dr. Green. Dr. Green, on his part, set little store by any professional advice of Dr. White. It so happened that one day a patient visited Dr. Green's clinic for consultation. Dr. Green, as was his wont, asked the patient point-blank: "Did you consult any other physician before coming to me?" The patient timidly replied: "Yes, sir, I did; I first went to Dr. White." "Dr. White! What wrong advice did that stupid quack offer you?" "He asked me to come to you."

Let us now leave for a moment the domain of general physicians and surgeons and cast an anxious look at another much-maligned tribe of doctors, the dental surgeons. Theirs is an unthankful task and so many unkind jokes are current about them. The rumour is spread abroad that the dentists are apt to pull out your healthy tooth instead of the diseased one in spite of your agonised protest, "Oh, not that one, please!" Or, worse still, a dentist in his momentary aberration may strap on to his chair the healthy friend of the patient accompanying the latter to the dentist's chamber, and then violently extract his absolutely sane tooth while the genuine patient sits near by groaning in pain.

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Be that as it may, it is an undeniable fact that most men are inclined not to give the dentist's job the importance and respect it deserves. "But", to quote Amal Kiran, "Shakespeare has a dig at the savants, the wise men, who look down their noses at it — until something goes wrong with their wisdom-teeth:

For there was never yet philosopher

That could endure the toothache patiently,

However they have writ the style of gods

And made a push at chance and sufferance.

"In plain prose, philosophers may have high-falutingly made light of our mortal situation in which ill-luck and suffering have play, but let them get a cavity in their teeth and they will be jumping about with exclamations which, whether melopoeic or phanopoeic or logopoeic, would certainly not be philosophic."²

And to have a carious tooth extracted, it was indeed a veritable ordeal for the patient in those bad old days when anaesthetics had not yet come into the armoury of surgeons. Let us listen to Amal Kiran describing the horrific old way, expecting him, of course, to lace his description with humorous overtones:

"The patient's chair was put against a wall and his hands strapped down to the arms of the chair. The dentist would stand before him with a huge forceps held in both hands. On grasping the tooth with the forceps the dentist would pin down the patient in the chair by planting his own right foot on the patient's chest. Then, with the foot pushing and the hands pulling, the tooth would be out of the patient's mouth accompanied by a hideous yell."³

Such was the case before the discovery of Nitrous oxide or the so-called "laughing gas". Nitrous oxide happened to be the first general anesthetic to be applied to surgical cases and it was one Dr. Riggs, a dentist by profession, who was the first to have used it to good effect while extracting the diseased tooth of one

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Dr. Wells, a general physician. To good effect, did we say? Yes, it was indeed so, at least in the beginning; but the denouement was not very happy for poor Dr. Riggs. Let us hear the tragicomic story as told by our incomparable Amal Kiran.

"Dr. Riggs the dentist took Dr. Wells the physician in his hands. Dr. Wells had a bad tooth needing extraction. But it was a firmly rooted molar and it would have made the patient howl madly if pulled out in the old way. ... All this was avoided by a few whiffs of [the anaesthetic] laughing gas. Dr. Wells became a completely co-operative dummy. In front of hundreds of people the dentist extracted the physician's tooth and demonstrated the efficacy of general anaesthesia.

"Soon after the operation Dr. Wells opened his eyes and holding up from the tray on the table beside him the extracted molar shouted to the audience: 'Here's a new era in tooth-pulling!' However, the next moment he took a [closer] look at the molar [innocently lying in the cup of his palm]. Dr. Wells went suddenly pale. It was a perfectly whole and healthy tooth. Dr. Riggs had extracted the wrong molar! The perfect cooperation of the unconscious patient unable to know which tooth was being painlessly pulled out had indeed ushered in a new era in erroneously effective dentistry!"

Now the denouement. "Dr. Wells went for Dr. Riggs and with one hefty punch in the nose knocked him senseless in turn."⁴

Let the 'senseless' dentist depart from the scene and let us now make some harmless fun of the ponderously pedantic diagnostic pronouncements at times made by the doctors. But whom should we call on the scene for our purpose? — For a change, let a psychiatrist now appear on the stage. And here is the 'true' (!) story concerning his diagnosis.

There was a naughty boy who was thought by his parents to be acting rather oddly. The anxious mother of the boy took him to a reputed psychiatrist; for, she hoped that the veteran doctor

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with his varied experience and great expertise would surely be able to find the concealed complexes and hidden disorders that were supposedly playing havoc with her child's mind!

In the psychiatrist's parlour the mighty man of mental science wanted to get the spontaneous response of the boy's subconscious. So he fired at him the startling question: "What would happen if I chop off your right ear?" The boy at once replied: "I would hear everything half." "Hum! half!", muttered the psychiatrist to himself. Then he asked the naughty boy for the second time: "And what would happen if I cut off your left ear also?" The boy grinned and unhesitatingly answered: "Why, I wouldn't be able to see anything." "Ah, there you are," muttered the psychiatrist with grim pleasure. He took the mother aside and whispered to her in a solemn voice: "A very serious case. We shall have to examine the matter very deeply. Something abnormal is evidently at work in a hidden way. We'll gradually bring it up to the surface and effect a cure. Madam, bring the boy back to my clinic next Thursday."

The boy and his worried mother went back home. The lady was as puzzled as the psychiatrist at her son's strange unexpected answer: If both his ears were cut off, he won't be able to see anything! But as she was not entrenched in psycho-analytic pseudo-profundity, she did the most natural thing and asked her son: "Johnny, why did you give that queer reply?" Johnny smiled and said: "Why, mamma, it's so simple. If both my ears were cut off, my cap would come down over my eyes. How could I then see anything?" It goes without saying that the relieved mother flung some unpalatable words at the absent psychiatrist and there was no return visit to the doctor's clinic'

By now we have had enough of light-hearted digs at the whole tribe of surgeons and physicians, dentists and psychiatrists. Let us be repentant now and recall to our mind that the doctors have a sunny side too. They do not merely deal with knives and potions, they can be at the same time great lovers of the Muse. So, let us close this narration by describing the medico-poetic thrill that a doctor friend felt when he, being a

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Shakespearean scholar, first read the following lines in the Poet's Macbeth. Macbeth is appealing to his physician on behalf of his wife:

Canst thou not minister to a mind disease'd;

Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow;

Raze out the written troubles of the brain;

And with some sweet oblivious antidote

Cleanse the stuff d bosom of that perilous stuff

Which weighs upon the heart?

Our said doctor was enraptured on hearing an appeal like this. He thought that he would feel like a god if asked to do such things in such a sublime language. Macbeth is speaking of plucking a rooted sorrow, razing out brain-troubles and cleansing the stuffed bosom - procedures that appear to call for deep-going surgical operations! So, our friend thrilled and wondered, the great Shakespeare understood and appreciated the art and craft of the surgeons and the physicians! Three cheers for the Elizabethan marvel!!⁶

Leaving our doctor friend to revel in the thrill of his new Shakespearean discovery we now pass on to a consideration of Sri Aurobindo's own humour and witty remarks concerning various matters medical. But there is an interesting background to it. And this is how the fountain of Sri Aurobindo's 'medical' humour started gushing forth in streams of pure rasa and laughter:

Dr. NB, after having passed the Intermediate Examination from the University of Calcutta, went to Edinburgh for medical studies. In due course he returned to India and joined Sri Aurobindo Ashram in 1933. He was allotted work in the Carpentry Section of the Ashram. The Ashram dispensary was then under the charge of one Dayashankar to whom Sri Aurobindo had given the name of Aesculapius. He was a brilliant man but somewhat eccentric. In the year 1935 a serious

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mishap occurred to Dayashankar incapacitating him for the dispensary work. Dr. Becharlal, a visiting physician devotee from Gujarat, was looking after the dispensary affairs after the departure of Dayashankar. Now a need was felt for having someone as the permanent head of the Ashram medical services. Sri Aurobindo sounded Dr. NB if he would like to take charge of the dispensary. It so happened that NB was not very happy with his work in the timber godown. But there was a little snag. Dr. NB, fresh from the college campus, had not had sufficient personal experience as regards how to treat difficult cases. He expressed his misgivings to Sri Aurobindo and asked for his Guru's constant guidance in the matter. Sri Aurobindo assured him and with the Master's and the Mother's blessings he took independent charge of the medical services in the Ashram. The following excerpts from NB's correspondence with Sri Aurobindo will throw light on the whole sequence of the story.

Dr. NB: In Yoga everything seems to be opposite. My Rs. 20,000 over my medical education is in vain! I don't know what purpose will be seived by making me a carpenter of the Divine. If on the contrary I could have been the Son of a carpenter, that would be something!

Sri Aurobindo: I was under the impression that you are not enthusiastic over medicine or at least over the practice of it. If we had known that you are anxious to justify the 20,000, we could have utilised you in that direction. Are you serious about it?

Dr. NB: It comes as a great surprise to hear that you consider enthusiasm so important for want of which you didn't utilise my medical knowledge!

Sri Aurobindo: I meant that as you had no enthusiasm for drugs, you might just as well be busy with timber.

Dr. NB: I am really puzzled by your question; the more so because you have said that I am progressing more [in sadhana] than I would have done if I were a literary or medical gent.

Sri Aurobindo: Well, Mother had thought of you when we wanted somebody to fill up the hole left by the erratic

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Dayashankar and we also don't know what we shall do when Becharlal goes for his periodic inspection of his affairs in Gujarat. We had rejected the idea because we thought you might not only [be] not enthusiastic but the reverse of enthusiastic about again becoming a medical gent. When however you spoke lovingly and hungeringly about the Rs. 20,000, I rubbed my eyes and thought "Well, well! here's a chance!" That's all.

Dr. NB: If you seriously think that I may add my little strength to help the Divine and call me to do it, I am thrice seriously your man.

Sri Aurobindo: We will think of it in case of need.

(After about a week) Sri Aurobindo: To come to serious matters. What would you say if the Mother actually proposed to you to exchange the timber-trade for medicine? E.g. (1) to transfer your worldly and unworldly goods and your learned and noble person to the Dispensary and take physical charge of keeping it in order. (2) to help Becharlal in ministering to the physical ills of the sadhaks - with the provision that you may have hereafter to take the main charge, if he takes a trip to Gujarat.

The Mother is rather anxious that you should take up this work; she had the idea, as I told you, when D. S. broke down (which was a pity because he was in many respects the ideal man for the charge), but she did not propose it because she was not sure you would like it. As yet the suggestion is confidential, for, pending your answer, we have said nothing to Becharlal.

(After a few days) Dr. NB: Dr. B asked me to shift over to the Dispensary today itself, but I refused, waiting for your full instructions about the furniture, table lamp, management work, etc.

Sri Aurobindo: I think there is everything needed over there, table lamp and all. You had better go and see. If so, you will need to take only your personal things. ... You can move in whenever you like, handing over your wooden reponsibilities to Dikshit.

Dr. NB: Now that I shall be in charge of the Dispensary I

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feel afraid about my prestige. People expect great things from an England-returned doctor ( who, I may confide in you, hasn't had enough time for experience). If you can't save my prestige, save at least my face.

Sri Aurobindo: People are exceedingly silly - but I suppose they can't help themselves. ... The prestige I can't guarantee, but hope to save something of the face.

(After having shifted to the Dispensary) Dr. NB: Everybody seems to be happy to find me shifted from the "timber throne" to the Dispensary, and says, "Now is the right man in the right place"! But I don't know how long the right man will be right for them. They want me to entertain them with "payas"* to celebrate the occasion.

Sri Aurobindo: No man ever is the right one for them - for a long time, but just the time of digesting the payas.⁷

So Dr. NB settled down in his new job of "ministering to the physical ills of the sadhaks" and he started sending up to Sri Aurobindo every day what he called his 'Medical Notebook'. In this Exercise Book he used to note down all that was relevant about his patients of the day: the nature of their ailments, signs and symptoms shown, possible diagnoses, any complications feared, medicines prescribed or any other curative procedures suggested, etc., etc. Sri Aurobindo used to peruse these reports prepared by NB and send back to the doctor next morning his 'Medical Notebook'. This Notebook invariably contained Sri Aurobindo's own suggestions or his answers to the doctor's questions, sublime or ridiculous.

Dr. NB had established a very sweet relationship with Sri Aurobindo, his Guru. There was no trace of any inhibition in this relationship. Both the Guru and the disciple were absolutely free and frank with each other. The disciple used to frame his questions in a lively vein, and the Guru would answer with lightning flashes of humour. Here is an illustrative example:

* Payas: a sweet dish prepared from milk and rice.

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"NB: Thinking of this case and one or two others, I feel ashamed of my poor knowledge and experience. I was wondering how I would show my face to you at Pranam.

Sri Aurobindo: Cheer up. And as Danton said, 'De I'audace et toujours de I'audace¹: ['Boldness, and always boldness!] What is lacking in you is the doctor's confidence in guessing at a disease and throwing a medicine at it in the hope that it will stick and cure. But that is not what I mean by the quotation."⁸

This medical correspondence between Sri Aurobindo and his inexperienced doctor-disciple continued for more than three years till November 1938. It is from NB's Notebook that we have culled all the variegated instances of Sri Aurobindo's witty remarks and sparkling humour touching matters medical that we quote below. For the enhanced enjoyment by the readers we have at times categorized them under different sections. So far for the introduction. Now the actual delectable feast:

I. On the patient's complaints:

NB: S came back again [to the Dispensary]! But I can't get the head or tail of his symptoms. Now he says one thing, now another.

Sri Aurobindo: Mother stopped his hot water and tiffin carrier. He lamented about fever, liver pains and what not (that's his plea) for continuing them. I told him if he had such bad health, he must be under medical treatment, not rushing about everywhere and eating whatever he likes. He said doctor's treatment no good. But I suppose he has gone back either in the hope of your restoring his hot water and carrier or just to prove that cold water and Aroume [Ashram Community Dining Room] don't agree with him.

NB: Tomorrow I think we shall start santonin and watch.

Sri Aurobindo: Why give santonin to a healthy fellow and spoil his health? ... S's illness may now have become diplomatic ache and strategic fever.⁹

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II.On the doctor's way of prescribing:

NB: I intend to give him salicylate, iodine or arsenic one after the other.

Sri Aurobindo: It looks like throwing stones at a dog in the hope that one of them will hit him.¹⁰

III.How should a doctor prescribe:

NB: I want, to carry on the medical work well, the channel to open. Please don't say that I cogitate, hesitate, etc. It is precisely that that I want to avoid. Shall I adopt the surrealist method i.e. to keep for a moment very quiet and whatever strikes first, go ahead with it; only be careful in case of poisons!

Sri Aurobindo: There is a vegetable called "bubble and squeak". That describes the two methods you propose. "Bubble" is to go on tossing symptoms about in the head and trying to discover what they point to - that is your method. "Squeak" is to dart at a conclusion (supported by a quotation!) and ram some inappropriate medicine down the patient's throat - that's X's method. But the proper method is neither to bubble nor to squeak.

NB: You remember once I told you of this surrealist method and you cried - Good Lord!?

Sri Aurobindo: I did and I repeat it. I don't want this Ashram transferred to the next world by your powerful agency.¹'

NB: I wonder why you flared up at the idea of surrealist method. ... I didn't obviously mean sending your Ashram to the next world! No, not at all. I meant only this: say a case comes with pain in the stomach. I simply keep silent, suddenly comes to me the suggestion - gastritis.

Sri Aurobindo: I did not flare up. I was cold with horror. Doctors don't mean it when they do that kind of thing. It is not deliberate murder with them, but involuntary or, shall we say, experimental homicide.

NB: Do the successful doctors get it by plenty of experiences, treating, curing, killing, etc.?

Sri Aurobindo: Well, there are some who after killing a few

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hundreds, learn to kill only a few. But that is not intuition; that is simply learning from experience.¹²

IV. On a doctor making 'diagnosis':

NB: S had hard red swelling about the left elbow joint; no cause.

Sri Aurobindo: Sir, in this world there is nothing without a cause - unless you hold the ultramodern view that causation does not exist."

NB: Yesterday I thought K had T.B. or pneumonia. But where are they now? In one night everything over!

Sri Aurobindo: Shobhanallah With your diagnosis one would have expected him to be already in Paradise.¹⁴

NB: Still I am not sure that X's right side is free; but that can be ascertained by X-ray. Dr. R had that 'vicarious' impression to the last.

Sri Aurobindo: Why not pool results and say it was a vicarious monstrosity that produced a lung lesion in the middle left together with the right apex? Excuse levity - the temptation of a joke at doctors has always been too much for any lay resistance.

NB: If a homeopath went by symptoms only, he would perhaps cut off the leaf but I am afraid the roots would flourish as strongly as ever.

Sri Aurobindo: ... However, what bothers me about diagnosis is that if you put twenty doctors on a case they give twenty different diagnoses (in S's we had three doctors with three different theories of the illness) and such jokes as a doctor shouting "Appendix", opening up a man, finding illness neither of appendix nor volume or chapter and cheerfully stitching up are extremely common. So if a layman's respect for allopathic pathology and diagnosis is deficient sometimes and R's sneers at doctors' diagnoses find occasionally an echo, - well, it is not altogether without "rational" cause."

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V.On the doctors' only role!

Sri Aurobindo: I say - Dr. Hutchinson, President of the Royal Society of Medicine, - in London - says (vide "Sunday Times", p. 4) that if all the doctors struck work for a year, it would make no difference in the death rate. The doctors' only use is to give comfort, confidence and consolation. Now what do you say to this opinion of your President: Rather hot, isn't it?

NB: 'Our' President's theory is not only hot, but a little top-heavy it seems. If the doctor's function is only to give consolation, I fear many patients visiting us will leave, cursing us. Take X's case. ... Anyway, what is your opinion?

Sri Aurobindo: My opinion is that Allah is great and great is the mystery of the universe and things are not what they seem, etc.¹⁶

VI.On the doctor's prestige:

NB: I feel a great responsibility. It is bad luck for me to have to tackle such a difficult case... My prestige is also involved.

Sri Aurobindo: It is a test case, I suppose. But why so strong on prestige? I should have thought everybody knows that doctors have to be guessing all the time and that cure is a matter of hit or miss. If you hit often, you are a clever doctor - or if you kill people brilliantly, then also. It reduces itself to that.¹⁷

VII.Doctors' mania for pedantic gobbledegook!

Modern doctors are often in the habit of speaking in a mysterious jargon sprinkled with Greek and Latin terms. Whether in the process of identifying an illness or in reporting about its ramifications, they employ terms which, alas, instead of revealing the secrets of diseases to the worried patients visiting their clinics, only dumbfound them beyond measure. In a scene in a play of Moliere's we find this practice humorously illustrated:

Patient: I suffer with my head, Doctor.

Doctor: Oh, I know. That's Cephalalgia.

Patient: (very much worried): My digestion is also bad.

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Doctor, (shaking his head to and fro): I see. I know what it is. It's Dyspepsia.

Now Cephalalgia is the Greek name for 'headache' while Dyspepsia is the Greek translation of 'indigestion': that's all there is in these pompous terms!¹⁸ Sri Aurobindo's dig at the doctors for the latter's penchant for pedantic language is illustrated in the following extracts from Dr. NB's Notebook.

NB: An abdominal support should fit closely to the symphysis pubis and Poupart's ligaments below; above, it should not extend higher than the umbilicus.

Sri Aurobindo: And if it is to fit closely to certain Latin things as well as to Poupart's affairs, how can it be done without measuring?¹⁹

NB: I am sending the 4 reports ... I hope this set of "hieroglyphics" is now as clear as water.

Sri Aurobindo: I am afraid it is not so clear, though it is sufficiently watery.²⁰

NB: Have you asked Dr. R's opinion on this matter about the new patient?

Sri Aurobindo: Haven't asked him. Afraid of a resonant explanation which would leave me gobbrified and flabbergasted but no wiser than before.²¹

NB: Dr. Becharlal and I are again strongly suspecting D.L. of a double infection: hookworm with Trichomonas...

Sri Aurobindo: By the way, I understand how hookworms get in, but how do these tropical Technomaniacs or whatever you call them, make their entry on the stage?²²

NB: B has phimosis.

Sri Aurobindo: What kind of medical animal is this?

NB: There is a chronic difficulty with B's phimosis.

Sri Aurobindo: My dear sir, if you clap a word like that on

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an illness, do you think it is easy for the patient to recover?²³

NB: Examined Mulshankar. Most of the trouble is in the abduction of the hip joint.

Sri Aurobindo: Abduction of a joint, sir? What's this flagrant immorality? What happens to the joint when it is abducted?²⁴

Now comes the climax of Sri Aurobindo's dig. It so happened that his doctor-disciple NB started composing poems in English and in Bengali. The attempts were not always very successful. And Sri Aurobindo got the chance of paying the doctor in his own coin by fabricating strange-sounding Greek and Latin phrases to characterize the defects in NB's poetry. Here is a piece in illustration:

NB: Look at this Bengali sonnet. How is it?

Sri Aurobindo: Very fine indeed except for the concluding couplet which might be called a flat drop! What the deuce, sir! What kind of Coupletitis is this illness of yours? Anaemia finalis?

NB: What is this medical word, Sir? "What kind of coupletitis"?

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, that's it - like neuritis, laryngitis, etc.; so coupletitis, illness of the couplet.²⁵

VIII. On medicines and medical treatment:

NB: No medical cases today.

Sri Aurobindo: Hello! Golden Age come or what? No — for R's pain is kicking cheerfully again. It is telling her, "Your NB's potions and things indeed! I go when I like, come when I like. Doctors - pooh!"²⁶

NB: The opthalmologist said that N's eye-condition has improved. He has advised to give salicylates for past rheumatism.

Sri Aurobindo: All right — salicylate him as much as the Ost. likes. Queer! One has to be dosed not only for present and

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future but past ailments. Medicine like Brahman transcends time.²⁷

The following extract is not from NB's Notebook; it is from Amal Kiran's Life-Literature-Yoga:

A.K.: For Z's trouble, the advice of the doctors is a series of injections. I suppose he has to follow it?

Sri Aurobindo: Injections are all the fashion; for everything it is 'inject, inject, and again inject'. Medicine has gone through three stages in modern times - first (at the beginning in Moliere's days) it was 'bleed and douche' — then 'drug and diet' - now it is 'serum and injection'. Praise the Lord! not for the illnesses, but for the doctors. However, each of these formulas has a part truth behind it - with its advantages and disadvantages. As all religions and philosophies point to the Supreme but each in a different direction, so all medical fashions are ways to health - though they don't always reach it.²⁸

IX. On medical prescriptions:

NB: Krishna Ayyar has cold and slight fever. Given aspirin. Requires Divine help.

Sri Aurobindo: One tablet of aspirin and another of aspiration might do.²⁹

NB: D was given Codein Phos syrup, and he says it instantaneously stopped the cough. Very surprising, almost miraculous, more effective and definite than Yoga-Force - his opinion.

Sri Aurobindo: The fellow! After my strong intervention, he now says it is not God's Force, but Codein Phos!⁵⁰

NB: Our "poisoned" patient V has, to our surprise, recovered. Our medical authority says that castor oil seeds are highly toxic and that 10 seeds are the extreme limit. This chap took more than three times 10! Is medical science mistaken or has your Force worked or is it the antidote or cow dung given by some villagers that did the miracle?

Sri Aurobindo: Perhaps it was Force + the cow dung that

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did it. You know the proverbial Cromwellism "Trust in God and keep your powder dry" - so "Open to the Force and keep your cow dung handy" would be the recipe for castor-oil-seed-eaters.'¹

X. On Sri Aurobindo's own prescriptions!

NB: I am plunged in a sea of dryness and am terribly thirsty for something. Along with it, waves of old desires. Any handy remedy?

Sri Aurobindo: Eucharistic injection from above, purgative rejection below; liquid diet, psychic fruit juice, milk of the spirit.'²

NB: Please ask Mother to give some blessings to this hopeless self.

Sri Aurobindo: R/

Vin. Ashirv. m. VII

Recept. Chlor. gr. XXV

Aqua jollity ad. lib.

Tine. Faith m. XV

Syr. Opt. Zss

12 doses every hour

(Signature)

NB: What's this second item in your prescription, Sir? Too Latin for my poor knowledge.

Sri Aurobindo: Chlorate of Receptivity.

NB: And I would put Aqua at the end to make it an absolutely pucca academical prescription.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, but I thought of the two last ingredients afterwards.

NB: And 12 doses every hour - these tinctures and vinums?

Sri Aurobindo: 12 doses — every hour (one each hour. Plagiarised from your language, sir.)

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NB: Where is the cost to be supplied from?

Sri Aurobindo: Gratis - for the poor."

XI.On what a doctor should be like:

Sri Aurobindo: A says you spoke wrathfully to Becharlal and Becharlal spoke wrathfully to her and accused her of high crimes and misdemeanours (like irregularity in eating) of which she was not guilty. So she is very wounded and won't go to Doctors any more!! Fact? or liver?

NB: Spoke wrathfully? I thought I am a very calm and peaceful man. But I'll tell you what happened: Dr. Becharlal and I were breaking our heads over the budget when A entered. I was a bit troubled about it and I asked Becharlal what her complaint was and he asked her in Gujerati: "Have you done some indiscretion in the diet?" that's all. Now you can judge for yourself.

Sri Aurobindo: Well, I don't know why but you have the reputation of being a fierce and firebrand doctor who considers it a sin for patients to have an illness; you may be right but tradition demands that a doctor should be soft like butter, soothing like treacle, sweet like sugar and jolly like jam. So!³⁴

XII.Humour about Dr. NB confusing the names of his patients:

(In the medical report, NB wrote the name of a patient as Ambala instead of Ambalal.)

Sri Aurobindo: I say! this is the name of a town [in the Punjab], not of a person.³⁵

NB: Rambhai complains of severe pain in the abdomen, due to constipation. Gave a dose of castor oil.

Sri Aurobindo: Rambhai is in Gujerat, if you please. If you are administering doses of castor oil to his abdomen direct from here, you must be a siddha Fascist Yogi. But perhaps you mean Ramkumar? Or whom do you mean? Is it -?³⁶

XIII.A case of sustained humour: Sallies between the Guru and the disciple:

Sri Aurobindo: Rene is sending me charts of the fever

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temperature of his cousin Badrunnissa who has been suffering from typhoid enteric (so the Colonel Doctor of Hyderabad says) with affection of chest which was suspected to be pneumonia. Now in his first chart the figures were 104°, 103°, 102°, 101° and an uninstructed layman could understand - but what are these damned medical hieroglyphs 30-112, 26-118, E 24-110, 24-110?

NB: Here's about the "damned hieroglyphs" you don't understand though I don't understand why you don't. If you only read Sherlock Holmes' science of deduction and analysis which I have done lately, you would have at once realised my remarks.

Sri Aurobindo: Sherlock Holmes arranges his facts beforehand and then detects them unlike the doctors.

NB: Well, keep the chart vertically, then it should be at once clear to you that the red line is the normal temperature line: 98.6, and the fever would be about 101.8. Then the figures below, what could they be? Well, your long association with doctors should have taught you that in a fever chart pulse rate is recorded with the temperature.

Sri Aurobindo: Never gave me one, so far as I remember; I mean not of this problematical kind.

NB: If that be so, between those pairs of damned figures, one must be of pulse and which is it? Surely not 30, 26, because with that rate no charts would have been sent to you!

Sri Aurobindo: Naturally, I knew it must be the pulse, but what were the unspeakable 30s and 24s attached to them? And I didn't want the pulse, I wanted the temperature. However your red line which I had not noticed sheds a red light on the matter, so that is clear now. I was holding it horizontal because of its inordinate length.

NB: What are these 30, 26, 24 and 24 then? Just a little bit of cool thinking would again point out, Sir, that they are respiration rates - normal being 20, 22, or so. Now is it simple and easy or is it not?

Sri Aurobindo: No, sir, it is not. What is the normal respiration rate anyhow? 32 below zero or 106° above? (N.B. zero not Fahrenheit but Breathen-height.) [Readers will not fail to enjoy

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here Sri Aurobindo's humour involved in the echoing expressions 'Fahrenheit' and 'Breathen-height'.]

But what about E? Extravagant? Eccentric? Epatant?

NB: I chuckled, Sir, to learn that you held the chart horizontally, because of its length! And E is none of those high-sounding "extravagant" words. If you had just looked about you for a moment, lifting your eyes from the correspondence, you would have discovered that E stands for nothing but a simple Evening. Clear?

Sri Aurobindo: No, what has evening to do with it? Evening star? "Twinkle, twinkle, evening star! How I wonder what your temperatures are?" But I suppose Sir James Jeans knows and doesn't wonder. But anyhow E for Evening sounds both irrelevant and poetic.

NB: No, Sir, it is not at all irrelevant, though poetic. I swear it is evening. You know they take these pulse and respiration rates Morning and Evening of which M and E are shorthands ... But what is this Jones — knows and doesn't wonder?

Sri Aurobindo: Jeans, Jeans, Jeans - not Jones!

Sir James Jeans, sir, who knows all about the temperatures, weights and other family details of the stars, including E.

By the way, what do you mean by deceiving me about E in the Hyderabad fever chart? Rene wrote that E is the entry in the "Motions" column; it evidently means enema. Poetry indeed! Sunset colours indeed! Enema, sir! Motions, sir! Compared with that, ling bling is epically poetic.

NB: I beg your pardon, Sir! Enema didn't strike me at all. But I hope it didn't make any difference in the working of your Force unless you enematised the patient too much. It is a pleasure to learn that one can deceive the Divine, however!

Sri Aurobindo: If the Divine chooses to be deceived, anyone can deceive him - just as he can run away from the battle, palayanamapi. You are evidently not up to the tricks of the Lila.³⁷

XIV. Witty remarks on matters medical (uncategorized):

(1) NB: For S, this time we hadn't tried charcoal, but

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yesterday we began it and are continuing it. Yes, his symptoms are blood-curdling, if they are true. God knows how to cure him.

Sri Aurobindo: If He does, send Him a telephone!³⁸

(2)NB: As for S, we have exhausted our means. One thing remains - liver extract which I have withheld till now.

Sri Aurobindo: You can try that - since it is his liver - let's see if it extracts him from his agonies.³⁹

(3)NB: Iodine is very often given, especially collosal iodine injection which is very good.

Sri Aurobindo: What's this word? Cousin of colossal?⁴⁰

(4)NB: For S, I can't increase his evening meal yet. My idea is to build up gradually the diet so that the system may be accustomed and strengthened at the same time. No use upsetting the fallen stomach, liver, etc. - what?

Sri Aurobindo: I suppose so. Don't understand the ways of a fallen stomach — sounds too much like a fallen angel — but S is not that, (no angel, that is to say) whatever his stomach may be.⁴¹

(5)NB: Mother is giving us doctors a very good compliment, I hear! that we confine people to bed till they are really confined!

Sri Aurobindo: Yes. Mother did pass on that epigram. Doctors were born to hear such remarks.⁴²

(6)NB: No meal as yet, Sir. It is 9.30 p.m. No sleep, no rest. And still you express your surprise and grudge at a doctor being given a certificate!

Sri Aurobindo: Poor doctors who give up rest and sleep and food, yet remain all unwept, unhonoured and unsung. Never mind! Perhaps in heaven they will have a big address given them one mile long and signed by all the angels -cherubim and seraphim together.⁴³

(7)NB: By 'lime juice', I meant orange juice - R would call it 'sweet lime juice', not orange juice which is supposed to be different!

Sri Aurobindo: Perplexing! Why should juice of oranges be called 'sweet lime juice'? I suppose in that case juice of sweet

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limes should be called orange juice? Vice versa? Mutual transmutation? or what? Orange is certainly supposed to be different from sweet lime and it is oranges and not sweet limes we are using. R seems to live in a world of his over-mental construction which has nothing to do with this poor earth and common "humanity".⁴⁴

(8)NB: I intend to try a new medicine for Prasanna's eyes, brushing the lids with sodium chlor. powder which is supposed to give good results. But it is rather painful. She might complain of the excruciating pain.

Sri Aurobindo: Good Lord! She will make a worse noise than Hercules on the shirt of Nessus!

NB: If you give us courage, we may venture.

Sri Aurobindo: Not possible. Prasanna will become worse than aprasanna, she will become abasanna and do dharna. Won't do.⁴⁵

[N.B. The three Indian words 'aprasanna', 'abasanna' and 'dharna' mean respectively 'displeased', 'depressed or despondent' and 'hunger strike'.]

(9)NB: The hostile forces have made my life unbearable, sucking away every drop of blood. Can't sit outside even one minute under the breezy starry sky. Their breeding place is in the thick bushes M has planted. Can't you direct him to strike them off and save my precious life? What will happen if the Ashram doctor is to die of malaria?

Sri Aurobindo: My dear sir, M will have a fit and you will have to treat him and probably he will kill you into the bargain. You prefer a violent death to malaria? Where there is life, there is hope, even if there are also mosquitoes. Why not negotiate with M himself? If you plead with him in a sweet, low, pathetic voice, he may have mercy.⁴⁶

We bring to an end this chapter on "Matters Medical" with an interesting extract from N's correspondence with Sri Aurobindo bearing on the subject of the soul possibly dwelling in the pineal gland of the brain!

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NB: I read in a book that the soul dwells somewhere in the brain; is the soul the same as the entity residing in the pineal?

Sri Aurobindo: God knows and perhaps X also. I don't, I have no idea. Never bothered about the pineal gland. In fact my spirit entity "receded from" it, even "finally left" it long ago without my dying - at least I seem to myself to be alive still ...

NB: Kundalini business also seems a mystery to me. I read somewhere that the soul sojourns in the brain! Heard of it?

Sri Aurobindo: Now for the first time.

NB: Is the spirit-entity the same as the soul, residing in the pineal gland?

Sri Aurobindo: Allow me to state my difficulty. How the devil can a spirit-entity be enclosed in a material gland? So far as I know the self or spirit is not enclosed in the body, rather the body is in the self. ... A spirit confined in a gland and dislodged from it by a pistol shot is a kind of language which I buck at. ... Figuratively we speak of the Purusha in this or that centre of the body. ... If the Radhaswami affirmations are meant to be another kind of language expressing certain psycho-physical experiences, I have no objection. But why all this pineal glandism and talk about entities and bullets?

If I say the Purusha is in the heart, do I mean it is there in the physical heart, tumbling about in the flow of the blood or stuck in the valves or the muscular portions and when a bullet lodges in the heart it jumps up with an Ooah! and tumbles down dead or goes off skating and swimming into some grey or white matter worlds beyond? Certainly not. I am using a significant language which expresses certain relations between the psychic consciousness and the physical of which we become aware by Yoga."¹⁷

Here ends the chapter on "Matters Medical": let us now pass on to the consideration of Sri Aurobindo's humour playing on matters "logical".

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REFERENCES

N.B. For what the abbreviationsstand for please consult Bibliography on page 439.

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