Excerpt from The Hakim Sahib, the Foreign Doctor: A Biography of Joseph Plumb Cochran I desire to thank the friends who have spared no pains to supply information for this biography. The love and regard which all of us who knew Dr. Cochran felt for him make us eager to do everything we can to honour his memory, and to perpetuate the influence of his character and career. And to this end I have sought in this sketch to preserve, as much as possible, the spirit of the man and the contemporary and local colouring as these are embodied in his reports and in his own and his wife's correspondence. Hakim Sahib was the title by which Dr. Cochran was known in Persia. Hakim is the Persian word for doctor, and Sahib, meaning master or sir, is the respectful term of address applied to foreigners in Persia and India. I hope that those who read this sketch may feel something of the simplicity and strength, the honour and truth of a life which coupled simple faith and ceaseless toil. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.