^58 On the State of Medicine in 



whoever wears a hat and not a turban, is immediately looked on 

 as the possessor of medical knowledge, and is at once called 

 " Hekim Baschi,'' and must, 7iolens volens, immediately enter 

 upon practice, for the Turks crowd round him, and hold out 

 their hands that he may feel their pulse, which, in their opi- 

 nion, is all that is necessary to enable the physician to form a 

 correct diagnosis, and they believe, therefore, that when the 

 pulse has been felt, nothing more is required to give an insight 

 into the nature of their disease, and the proper method of treat- 

 ment. Others of the crowd, thinking themselves sufficiently ac- 

 quainted with the nature of their own maladies, seek in the phy- 

 sician only a person to supply them with the remedies they 

 themselves indicate, and accordingly, one applies to him for a 

 vomit, another for a purgative, a third for a medicine to pro-* 

 duce wind, another for one to expel it; for the ancient patho- 

 logy, that diseases are caused by an excess or deficiency of 

 wind in the various organs and cavities of the body, is still 

 common ; thus, a headach is caused by wind in the head, 

 dyspnoea by wind in the chest. The physiology of respiration 

 is thus rendered very simple, and the trachea becomes the air 

 pipe not merely of the lungs, but of the whole body. 



The encouragement thus given to foreign practitioners, has 

 generated the greatest abuses, for as there are no means of as- 

 certaining the acquirements of strangers, many, induced by sor- 

 j,j4id views, embark on a system of barefaced quackery, and thus 

 persons who have followed other employments at home, are sud- 

 „denly physicians in Tifrkey. Dr Oppenheim was invited to at- 

 ,j tend a consultation with an eminent French physician at Smyrna, 

 ,,iwho candidly told him, that the only preparation he had for 

 ,,the profession was, service in the army as drum-major ! Among 

 !, the staft-surgeons of the Turkish army, was a Maltese, who had 

 been a letter-carrier at Corfu, and an Italian captain of a mer- 

 _ j^jjhant vessel, who had been shipwrecked on the coast of Asia 

 ^,lJtfinor. A Genoese gentleman, implicated in the late revolu- 

 ^j^donary attempts in Piedmont, and who had long served in the 

 army, applied to Dr Oppenheim, who gave him sixteen recipes, 

 by means of which he was set up in the world, being soon after- 

 wards appointed physician to the governor of Jambul ! No- 

 thing can exceed the heterogeneous materials of which the mass 



