It wasn’t a scowl, even a thundering surrealist one – it was a tympanum-piercing howl – so one had to do something.Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1937
Letter ID: 1891
Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar
March 30, 1937
The trouble is that people expect their ailments to disappear by a miracle! Doctors are not Gods and Gods are not always miraculous, are they?
Miracles can be done, but there is no reason why they should be all instantaneous, whether from Gods or doctors.
Suddenly at 5 p.m. B’s pain vanished. So I justify his epistle, Sir! His thundering scowl burst your ear!
It wasn’t a scowl, even a thundering surrealist one – it was a tympanum-piercing howl – so one had to do something.
K gave her baby 2 spoons of milk of magnesia. Result – copious motions with blood and mucus discharge; no sleep, restlessness, crying, etc... Looks like irritation due to heavy dose of magnesia! Must K’s babies have something every time she comes here?
Well, if she gives them 2 spoons of milk of magnesia, they are bound to. That was the way D’s last baby got killed here, though M began it before she came. But the result was a dysentery which nothing can cure. But does your Science approve of purging babies of that age? In France, Mother says, the doctors (those who specialise for children at any rate) forbid purgatives being given on any excuse to children under twelve months.
Some Force from you is wanted, for the baby can’t aspire and surrender, Sir!
Exactly! that’s why milk of magnesia should not be given. Any baby treated in that way will need much aspiration and surrender to counteract the results.
[About the patient with the “internal discharge”:] He says that only after slight sleep or rest he feels giddy, weak and the condition lasts for 2 or 3 days. From this he gathers that there has been the discharge.
It is only gathered then! I was insisting that it was not possible, but the fellow ne voulait pas démordre1.
But do you know that he is awfully, terribly and damnably constipated?
I knew he was constipative, but not so adverbially.
By the way, I want to know, just as a piece of information, 
what Mother is going to do about the awful smell around Belle Vue.
Smell was that of Godard’s prawns. The Municipality has just thundered at him and given notice to the prawns to quit. I am told that there is a sensible odorous amelioration since the last two days.
1 The fellow stuck to what he said; the fellow wouldn’t give up his point.