394 Regeneration of Medicine in Egypt. [May, 



dicine to Arab pupils through European Dragomans, themselves destitute of Medical 

 knowledge. Far different would the result have been, had the admirable principle of 

 the Normal schools of Prussia and France been adopted in the first instance — had Clot 

 Be/ for the first four years contented himself by educating thoroughly a few clever 

 youths through the medium of his language, and had he then employed them to impart, 

 in their own tongue, the knowledge they had themselves acquired. 



Such is the system which silently and unprofessedly has been adopted in the 

 Calcutta College with a success which defies denial. If but few pupils have been 

 educated, the completeness of their education is unquestionable ; and each is now ready 

 to be made the means of diffusing his own knowledge among his countrymen in the 

 only dialects they understand. 



In September next the Medical College of Calcutta ceases to be exclusively an 

 English School, and will embrace, with its original Normal section, a secondary ver- 

 nacular class, receiving instruction, through the Hindoostanee language, from native 

 teachers, and numbering over 150 pupils. Let this class but prosper, as we doubt not 

 it must, and then indeed we may triumph in accomplishing the inappreciable object of 

 placing medical assistance practically within the reach of all classes of the Native 

 population. Similar institutions will then spring up in all the great provincial cities, and 

 thus to every village and hamlet will radiate the light of the most beneficent science 

 within the acquisition of man.— Eds. 



Prior to the reform introduced by the Pacha and Viceroy Mehemet 

 Aly, medicine was in the same state in Egypt as in other parts of 

 the Levant ; it was, namely, in a state of absolute infancy, or to speak 

 more accurately, in one still inferior to infancy itself. Not possessing 

 schools or masters, books or dissecting-rooms, nor any other place of 

 public or private instruction, the natives who devoted themselves to 

 the care of the general health, following corrupt traditions, practised a 

 blind empiricism which, mingled with a certain superstitious charla- 

 tanism, was more adapted to disseminate death, than to prevent the pre- 

 mature diminution of lives. Foreigners who there practised medicine 

 were generally persons destitute of science and of conscience, and abus- 

 ing the unfortunate licence given to all of calling themselves Physicians, 

 they simulated the character that they possessed not, and thus pro- 

 faned the sublime priesthood of Hygea, to the incalculable detriment 

 of the wretched. The true and clever physicians, who for merit and 

 legal qualification could be entitled such, in Egypt were very few, and 

 often disregarded and forgotten ; as not unfrequently happens in unpo- 

 lished and illiterate nations, to the truly learned placed in counter- 

 position to the charlatan. 



Although the French claim for themselves the work of the regener- 

 ation of medicine in Egypt, it is undoubted, nevertheless, that the 

 glory of the enterprise, whatever it may be, is due to the Italians. In 

 truth, since Egypt began to breathe, which was about the year 1811, 

 when Mehemet Aly completed his sanguinary struggle with the 



