A RIDE TO MAGNESIA. 161 



they term him, and all the other functionaries are 

 native Turka The dispensary is excellently well 

 kept, and among its duties is the keeping of a regular 

 sick-register. This details in form the malady and 

 treatment of each patient : so that satisfactory infor- 

 mation concerning any particular inmate may as 

 readily be obtained here as in any London hospital, 

 and medical precedents as certainly established. 



This register our friend had the complaisance to 

 submit to our inspection, and we were astonished at 

 the exactitude of its detail. He told us that among 

 his duties is that of making a regular nosological 

 return to Government periodically, and a report of the 

 number of deaths, with their respective causes. Few 

 people would have been prepared to find the exhibi- 

 tion of so much solicitude for the life and wellbeing 

 of the private soldier, on the part of the Turkish 

 Government. Such humanised policy is at least 

 wonderfully in contrast with all that we hear of the 

 domestic economy of these people but a few years 

 back, and with what, by all accounts, was the method 

 pursued in the armies of Mehemet AIL The habits 

 of the Turkish soldiers are very dirty, in spite of the 

 ablutions to which they are constrained by their 

 religion, which affect only their arms and legs. Of 

 the benefits of clean linen they are in mere ignor- 

 ance, and their fatalism is the spring of all kinds 

 of indiscretion. Think of seven or eight hundred 

 such fellows congregated in a barrack, with more 



VOL. IV. L 



