European aaid Asiatic Turkey, ^9 



shops in Atlrianople. Good medicines are to be had at Smyrna, 

 Salonica, and Constantinople, to which" places they are importje^ 

 from Marseilles, Trieste, and Venice ; as they find their way 

 into the interior, they are more hable to be adulterated. Where; 

 there exists nothing like a medical police, no check upon suc)|i 

 mal-practices, it may be readily conceived that no restraints are 

 placed on the sale of poisons, and, consequently, poisoning by 

 design and poisoning by accident are very frequent. Indeed, 

 it occasionally happens, that a patient coming to a doctor, gets, 

 medicine weighed in a scale still soiled with corrosive sublima^tc^ 

 or arsenic, and in quite sufficient quantity to despatch the un- 

 fortunate sufferer. Often, too, it happens, that inexperienced 

 beginners and ignorant pretenders, give powerful medicines in 

 poisonous doses, in which case the writhings of the patients are 

 interpreted as symptoms of their being possessed, and forthwith 

 the Turkish dervise and the Christian priest are in requisition, 

 and proceed simultaneously with their different forms of ex- 

 orcism. The precaution of having recourse to the ritQS of 

 two different religions, is taken to avoid the possibility of mis- 

 take or failure, for, say they, we cannot a priori tell whether, 

 our friend is possessed by a Mahommedan or by a ChristiAjij 



^^^^^' . !t fol .BsosqqBfi bi5d;Bf{7yiR 



Poisoning by design is still more frequent than poisoning 



by accident, and our good honest Irish practitioner, who re- 

 gards the oath of Hippocrates to be quite as unnecessary as the 

 oath he is obliged to take against the Pretender, will understand 

 better the necessity of many of the clauses ascribed to the. 

 father of physic, when he is told, that, in the east, the phy^-^ 

 cian is too frequently, to this day, the venal instrument of such 

 heinous mal-practices. Indeed, according to the religious views 

 of many Turks, it is no sin to poison an enemy, for the attempt, 

 to do so will assuredly fail, if he is not fated so to perish I Be- 

 sides, it is merely a measure of self-defence, for if you do not 

 anticipate your enemy, he is sure to poison you. * 



" Melancholy, as it is," i^ys Dr Oppenheim, "to witne^ 

 such mischievous misinterpretation of a Mohammedan dogma," 

 it is still more melancholy to see persons who profess Chris- 

 tianity engaged in the same guilty course, for it cannot be de- 

 nied that too many of the native Christians of the Greek Church 



