Shifting Self-Presentations

Following the opening of his grand bathhouse, Dean Mahomet's fame and popularity grew dramatically. He enhanced this growth through frequent self-promotional publicity, projecting himself and his method as the latest in medical science and exotic fashion. In addition to his continuing newspaper advertisements, he expanded his book Cases Cured into a full medical casebook. Dean Mahomet followed the popular medical casebook genre by organizing his book around a quasi-scientific analysis of diseases, symptoms, methods, cures, and testimonials: Shampooing, or, Benefits Resulting From the use of The Indian Medicated Vapour Bath, As introduced into this country by S. D. Mahomed (A Native of India). In all, he published three editions of this book: 1822, 1826, 1838. Each edition expanded the previous one, adding another layer to the identity he had constructed in order to reflect the self-image that he wished to project at that time (see figure 9). This work received serious attention in at least one leading literary journal.^[81]

In an age when each medical faculty (Physicians, Surgeons, and Apothecaries) was gradually organizing itself into a Royal College, with specified requirements for admission, Dean Mahomet came to feel the need for formal medical credentials.^[82] In the first edition of Shampooing (1822), he claimed medical training in India, prior to his entry into the Company's army. To accommodate these years of medical training, he modified his life-story, increasing his putative age by a decade:

The humble author of these sheets, is a native of India; and was born in the year 1749, at Patna, the capital of Bihar, in Hindoostan.…I was educated to the profession of, and served in the Company's Service as, a Surgeon, which capacity I afterwards relinquished, and acted in a military character, exclusively for nearly fifteen years. In the year 1780, I was appointed to a company under General, then Major, Popham; and at the commencement of the year 1784, left the service and came to Europe, where I have resided ever since.^[83]

In the entrepreneurial environment of the early nineteenth century, a range of self-proclaimed experts made fortunes selling medicine and medical treatments to the public.^[84] Dean Mahomet remained well within the bounds of medical and advertising ethics of the day.

Later family traditions among Dean Mahomet's descendants attributed to him professional training as “a medical student at the Hospital in Calcutta…[His commission as] Soubadar of the 27th Regiment…was offered by the Colonel…in grateful recognition of his skillful treatment of cholera among the soldiers.”^[85] This family tradition is not supported either by East India Company records or Dean Mahomet's own Travels. A descendant rationalized the decadewide discrepancy in the dates Dean Mahomet gave for his birth in Travels and in Shampooing as due to the “difficulty” of conversion from the lunar Muslim calendar to the solar Christian calendar.^[86] While Dean Mahomet may have given this implausible explanation to the curious and his descendants, the 1759 date of birth he stated in Travels accords perfectly with existing records and the chronology of the events of his life, while the 1749 date he claimed in Shampooing does not.

In the next edition of Shampooing (1826), Dean Mahomet further enhanced the amount of scientific testing that had gone into his “invention.” He explained how he developed his hypothesis about the properties of his vapor and shampooing, echoing the format of a scientific paper. He portrayed himself as an inventive, but disparaged, medical practitioner whose empirically derived method eventually triumphed over prejudice. This prejudice, however, rested not on racial grounds, but rather on his challenge as a newcomer to more established and conventional medical practitioners:

It is not in the power of any individual to…attempt to establish a new opinion without the risk of incurring the ridicule, as well as censure, of some portion of mankind. So it was with me: in the face of indisputable evidence, I had to struggle with doubts and objections raised and circulated against my Bath.…Fortunately, however, I have lived to see my Bath survive the vituperations of the weak and the aspersions of the [in]credulous.…Upwards of a hundred medical gentlemen…of the first professional reputation…have since tried the experiment on themselves; most of them were invalids, but many were merely prompted by an honourable desire to ascertain truth.^[87]

Thus, by this time, Dean Mahomet had located his medical methods within the European scientific discourse.

In addition to “modern” medicine, Dean Mahomet also drew upon the European classical tradition to support his treatment: “Homer mentions the use of private baths, which baths possessed medicinal properties.…[T]he Romans directed their attention in particular to the actual cure of disease by impregnated waters.”^[88] This passage contrasts strikingly with the scathing classical references to shampooing by Martial and Seneca cited in Travels (Letter XXV).

Dean Mahomet further took authority for his method from ancient Hindu practice: “To the Hindoos, who are the cleanest and finest people in the East, we are principally indebted for the Medicated Bath.…”^[89] Many among the British public never understood the distinction between Hindu and Muslim, or Dean Mahomet's relationship to either religious community, even after he had lived in Britain for over half a century.^[90]

Nowhere, indeed, did Dean Mahomet specify his own training in shampooing or vapor bathing that would have prepared him for this career. He implied that his self-identification as a “native” of India had qualified him as a master of “Eastern” knowledge generally. Familiar as we are now with his earlier years, we can understand why, although he came to this career in his mid-fifties, he sought to indicate to his patients and potential patients a far longer commitment to the medical profession.