1839] Regeneration of Medicine in Egypt. 405 



have corrected and moderated, at least in a great measure, the lament- 

 able consequences of such primary sources, were in accordance (we grieve 

 to advert to it) with the rest of the ill-compacted edifice, and were 

 absolutely unsuited for the high and important office they undertook.* 

 The provisions therefore that emanated from their Committee,, and 

 were executed by their subalterns, were, we regret, seldom useful, and 

 often noxious to the State. 



To commence from what we stated to be the first scope of the sani- 

 tary discipline with regard to an endemical disease, nothing was done 

 to improve the salubrity of the country, if we except the prohibition, 

 often eluded, of interring corpses in the interior, a device undoubt- 

 edly beneficial, but insufficient by itself to cut off the intrinsic fo- 

 mites of the evil, as was required. In a recent little work on the Bu. 

 bonic plague of the Levant, we explained the causes to which, in 

 our opinion, Alexandria and Lower Egypt owe their deplorable privi- 

 lege of having been for ages the chosen nest of that malady, and we 

 will readily avow that many of them are such as to surpass perhaps the 

 limited efficacy of human remedies. Nevertheless it is undeniable, 

 that if by a well understood system of sanitary regulations, constantly 

 acted up to, a part at least of those causes had been obviated, the awful 

 scourge would either have less frequently desolated the country, or its 

 consequences would have been less disastrous. Now what has been 

 done by the Alexandria Committee in order to achieve so beneficial 

 a result ? We have already stated, either nothing whatsoever, or too 

 little to produce any fruit ? And we might easily demonstrate it with 

 examples, were we not disallowed by brevity from entering into mi- 

 nuter details. But not wishing our assertion to remain totally un- 

 proved, we will observe : 1st. That if human corpses be interred by 

 day without the walls, the carcasses of camels, horses, asses, and of that 

 numberless group of minor quadrupeds which at present people Egypt 

 more than the bipeds, are shamefully allowed to rot in the inside 

 streets and squares. 2dly. That dung, rubbish, filthy water, and 

 similar off-scourings of the city always remain in the spot they hap- 

 pened to fall on, without any passage or exit to drain off from the 

 habitations of the living — a most shocking inconvenience, that would 

 alone suffice to render any climate naturally wholesome and pure, mur- 

 derous to the last degree. 3dly. That neither the education, nor the 

 condition of the people, properly so-called, being improved for reasons 

 superior to the will of the Government, the dwellings or rather the 

 huts of the Arabs continue to be real dens of wild beasts, squalid, filthy, 



* Now however Signor Grassi commences to distinguish himself with repeated 

 observations ; he is the chief doctor attached to the above named Committee. 



