Old Ugly-Face by Talbot Mundy

The interruption was a thudding on the thick door. It sounded far off, almost alarming. But when Elsa touched the bronze bell it turned out to be only two wrinkled old Tibetan monks. One was the Abbot's physician. The other brought tea in a brass urn-- buttered tea stewed and salted, that isn't so awful once you're used to it. The smiling old doctor professed not to know why there were three cups. It was not his business. He had brought medicine for Elsa. He poured it from a silver vial into a spoon of rhinoceros horn, opened his own mouth by way of suggestion, pushed the spoon halfway down Elsa's throat and turned it until she gagged and swallowed the horrible stuff. He watched her cough, crossing his fingers, murmuring sacred words to ward off devils. Then he murmured a blessing, stowed the utterly unsanitary spoon into an inner pocket, corked the vial, smiled at Andrew Gunning with a shrewd, almost monkey-like glance of his deeply set dark eyes and walked out, whirling his prayer wheel, followed by the monk with the brass tray. When the door thudded shut Andrew seized the opportunity to change the subject: "So you're still on the sick list?"

-"No, I'm quite well. But Abbot Mu-ni Gam-po insists that I'm still full of devils that need driving out. He says it was devils that killed my baby. So he sends his doctor three times a day. If I should refuse to swallow that nasty stuff, I don't know what would happen."