European and Asiatic Turkey. 133 



hands of the barbers, who, in Asia Minor, may be seen in the 

 streets employed in boiling coffee, which they sell by tlie cup, 

 or in drawing teeth with the forceps, the only instrument they 

 use. Hernia is very frequent in Turkey, and often proves fatal : 

 the early age at which they all practise horsemanship, their 

 bad saddles and bad roads, make them liable to be violently 

 shaken in riding ; this probably accounts for the frequency of 

 hernia. There are no trusses made in Turkey, and consequent- 

 ly the poor are totally unprovided with them ; a few of the 

 wealthy procure them from Vienna, France, or Italy, but these, 

 in the course of time, being repaired in a bungling manner, 

 look like any thing but trusses, and injure rather than serve the 

 wearers. The Turkish surgeons are totally unacquainted with 

 the operation for freeing strangulated hernia, but they frequent- 

 ly attempt the radical cure of ruptures, by means of ligatures 

 or the actual cautery. 



" I had an opportunity of witnessing at Jenetschar (Larissa), 

 this operation performed by surgeon Michalaka of Sagor. The 

 patient was a robust man, about forty years old, who had the 

 hernia for many years, and was now resolved to get rid of it, on 

 account of the inconvenience it caused when he rode. When 

 the operator had convinced himself that the gut could be easily 

 returned, he tied the patient on a board, forming an inclined 

 plane, so that the patient's feet were much higher than his head. 



" With one hand he pressed against the neck of the sac, so as 

 to prevent the gut from re-entering it, with the other he made 

 an incision into the tumour, extending from about one inch above 

 Poupart's ligament, to two inches below it. He thus brought 

 to view the proper hernial sac, or, as he termed it, the bladder 

 of the rupture. This he pulled forcibly, with both hands, out 

 as far as possible, tied a strong silken string round the neck of 

 the sac near the ring, and cut away the sac below the ligature. 

 The spermatic chord was evidently included in the ligature. 



book in the original, and I think he will feel as little inclined to plead the 

 cause of Sodom and Gouion*ah, as that of the Sultan and his Paschas; 1 am 

 glad to see the true character of the Sultan exposetl, in a letter from Con- 

 stantinople, published ui the Standard of 8th July. 



