406 Regeneration of Medicine in Egypt. [May, 



and abominable. 4thly. That the identical groups of beggars now 

 wander through the narrow and crooked lanes of the city, destitute of 

 ventilation, who used to stray through them before, and who are the 

 ordinary receptacles and most fatal propagators of endemical and con- 

 tagious diseases. 5thly. That the necessary government regulations 

 regarding food are still wanting, while that which is exposed to sale is 

 generally another abundant source of epidemical maladies. 



Having premised these deplorable truths, passing now to the other 

 object of sanitary regulations, namely, that of protecting the country 

 from foreign pestilence, we have to lament on this point also equal, if 

 not greater blunders^ quoting as simple instances of proof, 1st. The bad 

 construction of the Lazarettos*, and especially of that of Alexandria, 

 the first of his Highness's, which has nothing in it commendable, whether 

 we speak of its site, or of the minutest particulars of its interior 

 management and medical administration — a truth that we demonstra- 

 ted in a previous work, addressed to H. E. Bogho Bey, on the 15th 

 December 1833, and which is gradually confirmed by daily experience. 

 2dly. The inconsistency of repulsive measures, that are every now and 

 then adopted, such as, for example, to permit a free ingress on the 

 land side to persons arriving from regions actually infected with the 

 plague, and at the same time to use rigour (we know not if more 

 barbarous or ridiculous) with the vessels and persons that arrive on the 

 sea-side, while they reach from the remotest places, even solely suspect- 

 ed. 3dly. The little or no exactness wherewith the sanitary orders, 

 whether well or ill decreed, are managed : because in consequence 

 of the deep ignorance of the sanitary officials, especially the sub- 

 alterns, their indifference and want of conviction, there is scarcely 

 ever a case in which the observance of a salutary precept is not 

 accompanied with a greater or less violation of another equally mighty, 

 which abundantly preponderates the utility that might have been 

 expected from the former: thus, for example, when a disorderly gang 

 of beastly Arab keepers are compelled to insulate an infected object, 

 to cleanse a house, to air tainted cloths, &c, we may affirm, without 

 fear of being deceived, that in such emergencies directed to avoid 

 contact, the latter almost always increases in place of diminishing, 

 as was the intent of the order. 



But we should be too prolix, were we to discuss more fully this 

 subject. The sketches we have given will suffice. 



* The Lazarettos of Europe are doubtless powerful means to prevent the diffusion 

 of exotic maladies, originally contagious, depending on multiplied contact : but those 

 of Egypt are little serviceable for its periodical and endemical diseases, and much more 

 when the Lazarettos are so shockingly situated, ill-managed, and badly laid out. 



