"أيام ثيم ولَّت" [و‎‎٨‎١] (٢٤٨/١٦١)

82
The C.M.S doctors laboured selflessly to bring medical care to
the people, but occasionally found themselves tripped by Persian
medical ethics based on the principle that, if the patient dies,
the doctor must be to blame.
Not long before, one of them had treated a woman whose case
turned out to be hopeless. Having done his best, he told her to
return to her village and await the will of God, and in due
course she died. The relatives demanded compensation from the
doctor which he indignantly refused (her treatment had, of
course, been free), and they brought a case against him in the
local court.
The case dragged on for months : no evidence was recorded and the
complainants frequently changed their story : the judge smoked
opium and went to sleep during the hearings : finally in
desperation the doctor employed a lawyer. A few days later he
found a radiant lawyer beaming on his doorstep. "Its all
settled, doctor - the most successful case I have ever handled!"
"How can it be settled? There hasn't been a hearing since you
took the case." "But it is, and most satisfactorily - you have
only to pay them one hundred tomans and they will drop it!" The
poor doctor was shattered at the proposition that he should pay
over money when he was quite blameless; and left the country
never to return.
The result of these ethics was that no Persian doctor would take
on a hopeless case. In Bushire a man whose leg had been bitten
off by a shark was carried to a doctor’s door. The servant who
answered it told the party to wait outside and disappeared
within. The doctor enquired from him whether the leg had been
severed above or below the knee and how badly the man was
bleeding. On hearing that the leg had been bitten off above the
knee and that the victim was bleeding profusely the doctor sent
the servant back to say that he was out! Not surprisingly the
Residency had its own doctor on the staff.
Apart from the members of the Residency, the only British in
Bushire comprised the Bank Manager and three or four employees of
Cable and Wireless who manned the Bushire Relay Station of the
Indo-European Telegraph. In spite of being so few and so hot we
played vigorous tennis on baked mud courts and there was even a
rudimentary golf-course beside the Residency. It was driving
over this course one evening in search of fresh air that I came
on an agitated shepherd who told me that a pair of wolves had
just killed two of his sheep. I turned the car and was back
within 5 minutes with my rifle, only to find that the wolves had
vanished and all that remained of the sheep was eight feet on the
blood-stained sand. It brought home the aptness of the phrase
'to eat like a wolf'!
★ ★ ★