Storia do Mogor 15.3

15.3

In Manucci we have obviously a man chiefly self-educated, and not the ' learned traveller ' of Cardinal Zurla. There are two portraits of him : the extraordinary attitude — one leg almost in air — of the younger one denotes, I suppose, a lively and mercurial temperament ; the older one, in profile, reveals a very long and inquisitive nose. In any case, he must have been, full of mother-wit, shrewd, and remarkably observant.
He boasts himself of his ready tongue, and I infer that a good deal of his success turned on his power of talk, which seldom left him at a loss in any awkward dilemma. This quality made him, I assume, what is called good company, a cheerful companion; perhaps, as professed story-tellers in their old age usually do, becoming slightly a bore, and, like Dogberry, bestowing on his hearers somewhat too abundantly of his 'tediousness.' Though for a time a soldier, I gather that he had more prudence than valour, being thoroughly impressed with the importance of living to fight another day. He describes the great historic battle of Samugarh in June, 1658, as a mere spectator, and we do not hear that he fired there a single shot in his beloved master's cause. Again, outside Lahor in 1659, when his commander, the eunuch Basant, was slain, we do not find Manucci playing a very heroic part.
From his various disputes about money, and his strong dislikes, I infer that he was rather vengeful, and he was certainly pertinacious in pushing a claim. In conduct he seems to have been moral and sober; indeed, in the former respect he paints himself as a very Joseph or St. Anthony, triumphant over all temptations. Even when, as old men use, he follows Falstaff and Master Shallow in letting us know that he, too, has 'heard the chimes at midnight,' he does not seem to have got farther than peeping into the closed litter of a dancing-girl. He was a devout Catholic, and resisted successfully all attempts to make him turn Mahomedan. In his old age he was much pre-occupied with ecclesiastical disputes, and had become, I should say, rather bigoted in his faith. I have spoken already of his disliking the Portuguese; the English, among whom he lived for twenty years, he evidently respected, but did not love; his whole affection goes out towards the French, whose praises he sings more than once.
His medical knowledge must have been limited; but it was evidently sufficient to secure him some professional reputation, perhaps due to the fact that 'among the blind the one-eyed man is king.' His practice evidently consisted chiefly in bleeding, purging, and the actual cautery. He is very proud of the last remedy as a cure for cholera; he refers to it more than once, and, as can be seen in the 'Lettres Edifiantes,' he strongly recommended it to Father Martin of the Madura Mission. He also says he introduced the use of the enema, which was unknown to native practice. In selling imitations of the Goa stones he was following an example already set by the Jesuit Fathers; and another source of income was some preparation he calls a 'cordial,' probably intended as an aphrodisiac. But, knowing what we do of the healing art in Italy and France in the seventeenth century, he does not seem to have been so very much behind his European contemporaries.