“Baboo Lallee Mohun Mitter, a young Hindoo, lay like a corpse the whole time of a tedious dissection, and did not awake till an hour and a half after the operation. One day the Baboo came to the hospital to pay his respects after getting well, and I asked him to let me try if he was still sensitive. Finding that he was, I took my assistant aside, and desired him to get me some salt, a slice of lime, a bit of gentian, and some brandy, and to give them to me silently, in any order he pleased, when I opened my mouth.

“We returned together, and after blindfolding Lallee Mohun, I took both his hands; and, opening my mouth, had a slice of half-rotten lime put into it by my assistant. Having chewed it, I asked, ‘Do you taste anything?’ — ‘Yes, I taste a nasty old lime;’ and he screwed up his mouth in disgust just as I did. He was equally correct with all the other substances, calling the gentian by its native name cheretta; and when I tasted the brandy, he said it was shrab (the general name for wine and spirits). Being asked what kind, he said, ‘what I used to drink.’ Being disgusted with life before I operated upon him, he had been in the habit of drinking two bottles of brandy a day.”