404 Regeneration of Medicine in Egypt. [May, 



H. H. Mehemet Aly continues however to have his children vacci- 

 nated, as also the new born infants belonging to his Harem and house- 

 hold, which is also the practice of the grandees around him. 



The first and greatest service that was to be rendered to Egypt by 

 medicine, was to defeat the fatal malady that for ages had taken up 

 its abode there, and which besides the internal havoc that it often 

 creates in the country, threatens also to invade the European shores, 

 and so causes the inhabitants of the latter to live in perpetual dread of 

 such a scourge. We must however unfortunately confess that not 

 even in this point have the medical innovations introduced into Egypt 

 corresponded to the necessities and expectations of the promoters. 



The ends to which sanitarial prescriptions should tend in countries 

 which like Egypt contain the germ of the plague, are principally two: 

 the first is, to destroy, if possible, the principle or vital spark of the 

 evil, or to restrict at least as much as possible the consequence of its 

 development: the second, to protect the country from the introduction 

 of external pestilence. Now it is undoubted that neither of those 

 ends has been attained by the local government through the medium 

 of the sanitarial institutions still flourishing in that country ; so that if 

 the merit of the design or (as it is termed) of the good intention be 

 abstracted, the world and the nation owe little to the promoters of 

 those institutions. 



It was only in the beginning of 1833 that the Pacha contemplated 

 the establishment of a Sanitarial Board, the centre of which he made 

 a so-called Consular Committee, consisting, as its name sounds, of the 

 European Consuls accredited by his Government. The representatives 

 of civilized nations were thought to possess an abundant store of 

 knowledge for the utility of so important an institution ; but it would 

 have been a wiser plan to seek such knowledge, in itself particular, in 

 persons of the trade ; and in truth, with one or two exceptions,* 

 the others had not the slightest idea of the topics they undertook 

 to discuss ; thus this radical defect soon ruined the work they com- 

 menced. So much the more, because to the relative incapability 

 of the superiors was soon added the absolute incapability of the subal- 

 terns selected to fill up the various situations of the new Egyptian 

 sanitarial iatrarchy. 



But the height of misfortune was, that the physicians specially 

 devoted to the Sanitarial Committee, who with their counsels might 



* It is almost superfluous to observe that one of those exceptions is the Chev. 

 and Councillor Acerhi, a man well known for his extraordinary talent and profound 

 knowledge. Let it however be remarked, that as soon as he perceived the impossibility 

 of attaining any useful result, he abstained from taking part in the new Consular 

 Committee, so as to save himself from all responsibility. 



