European and Asiatic Turkey. 119 



an octogenarian, had just been felicitated on the birth of a child. 

 The belief is almost universal in Turkey, that such a thing eX*. 

 ists as an elixir vitce, and even Ali Pascha, the celebrated tyrant 

 of Janina, employed a company of alchymists for five years in 

 his fortress, during which time they worked diligently in search 

 of an elixir capable of prolonging life. They failed, and Ali, 

 enraged at the expense he had so foolishly incurred, hanged 

 them all. 



" Early Maturity of Women. — The oriental women are like 

 hot house plants, which blossom quickly and quickly go out of 

 blow; at ten they menstruate, at twelve they marry, and at thirty 

 the catamenia cease. There is with them no intermediate stage, 

 no twilight, to soften the abruptness of the passage from youth 

 to old age.'"'' 



Dr Oppenheim makes an interesting remark on this subject. 

 He says that this early development depends not on climate so 

 much as on the race of mankind. Thus among the Bulgarians, 

 a Sclavonic race, who have settled in Turkey, the females men- 

 struate late, and seldom marry before five-and-twenty or thirty, 

 while, on the other hand, among the Jews, settled in the north of 

 Europe, in Russia and in Poland, the females arrive at puberty 

 two or three years sooner than the Sclavonic inhabitants of the 

 same countries. 



Turkish Population decreasing. — Although the Turks are 

 naturally a strong healthy people, yet at the present moment, 

 the population is far from being on the increase, a circumstance 

 which may be accounted for by the prevalence of certain habits 

 and customs, such as polygamy, the abuse of coffee, opium, and 

 tobacco, &c. When to this we add the native blood shed so 

 abundantly under a government long tottering and unstable, and 

 the devastations of the plague, it is easy to credit the assertion 

 of Dr Oppenheim, that the population of Turkey undergoes a 

 considerable annual diminution. In Turkey the mortality among 

 children is very great, in consequence of inoculation being much 

 more generally practised than vaccination. In the Asiatic pro- 

 vinces, indeed, inoculation is almost exclusively employed, and 

 this operation is intrusted to old women, who perform it very 

 adroitly. A great number are carried off by the smallpox^ 

 which Dr Oppenheim partly attributes to the heating regimen 



