116 Madden* s Travels in Turkey, 8fc. 



droguemen become doctors), took upon him to teach me my pro- 

 fessional duty, which he made to consist, in never giving advice 

 before I got my fee, in never asking questions of the sick, and in 

 never giving intelligible answers to the friends ; I was to look for 

 symptoms only in the pulse ; I was to limit my prognosis to three 

 words, ' In Shallah,' or, ' Please the Lord,' for doubtful cases ; 

 and ' AUakharim,' or ' God is great/ for desperate ones. I 

 took my post in the coffeeshop, had my pipe and coffee, while my 

 drogueman entered into conversation with the Turks about us." — 

 Vol i. p. 54. 



The story then proceeds as follows : — 



" A well-dressed man, who had been sitting by my side, in silence, 

 for half an hour, at last recollected he had a wife or two unwell, 

 and very gravely asked ' what I would cure a sick woman for ?' 

 I inquired her malady, — ' she was sick.' In what manner she 

 was affected, — ' why, she could not eat.' On these premises I 

 was to undertake to cure a patient, who, for aught I knew, might 

 be at that moment in articulo mortis. I could not bring myself to 

 drive the bargain ; so I left my enraged drogueman to go through 

 that pleasing process. I heard him ask a hundred piastres, and 

 heard him swear, by his father's head and his mother's soul, that I 

 never took less : however, after nearly an hour's haggling, I saw 

 fifty put into his hand ; and the promise of a hundred more, when 

 the patient got well, I saw treated with the contempt which, in 

 point of fact, it deserved. No man makes larger promises than a 

 Turk in sickness, and no man is so regardless of them in con- 

 valescence. I visited my patient, whom I afterwards found both 

 old and ugly ; but I was doomed, on the first occasion, to see no 

 part of her form ; she insisted on my ascertaining her disease with 

 a door between us, she being in one room and I in another ; the 

 door was ajar, and her head, enveloped in a sheet, as it was occa- 

 sionally projected to answer me, was the only part of her I had a 

 glimpse of; this was the only woman I ever attended here or 

 in the islands, who would not suffer the profanation of my fingers 

 on her wrist. I, however, could just collect enough from the 

 attendants, to cause me to suspect she had a cancer ; and I did 

 all, under such circumstances, that I could well do — I gave her an 

 opiate." — pp. 57, 58. 



At page 59 is a well told story of a Turkish consultation, at 

 which the author assisted. Nothing can display more clearly 

 the miserable condition of the medical interest in Turkey than 

 this scene. A host of doctors, Jews, Greeks, Italians^ and 

 even Moslems, thronged round the sick man's bed. Amongst 

 them were jumbled the friends, slaves, and followers of the 

 poor patient. The latter gave their opinion as well as the 

 doctors. But he who took the leading share in the business of 

 the day, was a Turkish priest, who administered to the diseases 



