Travels in India (Tavernier) 21.1.4

21.1.4

Claude Maille of Bourges, who practised both surgery and medicine. It was he who advised us not to drink any of the Ganges water, which would produce disturbance of the stomach, but to drink rather the water from wells. The chief of these Persian Physicians whom this Governor had in his pay, one day threw his wife down from the top of a terrace to the ground, impelled apparently to this cruel action by a freak of jealousy. He thought that she was killed, but she had only two or three ribs broken, and the relations of the woman threw themselves at the feet of the Governor to demand justice. The Governor summoned the Physician, and commanded him to withdraw, not wishing to keep him any longer in his service. He obeyed this order, and, having placed his disabled wife in a pallankeen, he departed with all his family. He was not more than three or four marches from the town when the Governor, finding himself unusually ill, sent to recall him, upon which the Physician stabbed his wife, four of his children, and thirteen female slaves, after which he returned to the Governor, who said nothing to him about it, and took him again into his service.