MEDICINE  IN  TURKEY. 
45T 
quire  positions  of  any  importance  in  the  army.  Their  connexion 
with  the  service  is  nominal,  rather  than  actual. 
Mussulmen  are  averse  to  surgical  operations.  Surgery  is,  in 
fact,  rarely  called  into  requisition  in  the  Turkish  camp.  During 
the  affair  of  Kalefat,  in  which  12,000  Turks  perished  from  cold, 
fatigue,  and  sorties  against  the  Russians,  and  when  patient  Mus- 
sulmen became  furious  maniacs  through  extreme  suffering,  but 
one  grave  surgical  operation  was  performed,  whereas  hundreds 
of  lives  might  have  been  saved  by  judicious  management. 
Comparatively  few  Turks  practise  medicine.  The  professors 
of  the  healing  art,  in  the  Orient,  are  mostly  Greek  and  Italian 
adventurers,  who  make  the  simple  Moslems  the  dupes  of  their 
charlatanism.  The  Imperial  license  to  practise  anywhere  in  the 
Sultan's  dominions  can  be  obtained  for  a  few  piastres.  Even 
those  who  are  employed  professionally  in  the  Seraglio,  and  pene- 
trate the  mysterious  harems  of  Turkish  grandees,  do  not  hesitate 
to  administer  preparations  followed  by  the  most  fatal  effects. 
They  do  indeed  profess  to  teach  medicine  in  the  schools  attached 
to  the  mosques,  after  the  doctrines  of  Avicenna,  Averroes,  and 
other  Arab  authors ;  but  the  practice  is  founded  upon  no  definite 
system.  The  believer  in  fatality  does  not  fear  death  ;  and  this 
is  the  principal  reason  why,  in  times  of  the  plague  and  cholera, 
the  Turks  suffer  less  than  the  timid  Greeks  and  Armenians. 
The  most  valuable  drugs  are  to  be  found  in  the  bazaars  ;  but, 
in  consequence  of  the  profound  ignorance  of  the  rudiments  of 
chemistry  among  the  Turks,  the  pharmaceutical  preparations 
sold  in  the  shops  are  gross  and  inefficacious.  Distilled  water  is 
the  ordinary  medium  for  administering  medicines. 
The  Mussulmen  Hakims  divide  all  diseases  into  two  classes — 
nervous  affections  of  the  face,  and  those  of  an  erysipelatous 
character  ;  and  secondly,  all  maladies  not  included  in  the  above. 
Among  the  Gneco-Slaves,  as  with  the  Turks,  surgery  is  mo- 
nopolised by  the  knights  of  the  razor.  The  practice  of  medicine 
is  confined,  for  the  most  part,  to  magicians  and  sorcerers.  There 
are  no  midwives  ;  nature  renders  them  superfluous.  The  moun- 
taineers have  a  very  efficacious  method  of  treating  wounds  re- 
ceived in  their  almost  perpetual  conflicts.  Intermittent  fever 
and  dysentery  are  the  prevalent  diseases  of  the  climate.  As 
among  all  uncivilized  or  half-civilized  people,  the  absence  of 
