There were about three hundred patients when I arrived, most of them down with severe Remittent fever. The Hakims were treating the fever by bleeding, purging, and starvation. Had they left the men untreated some of them might have recovered: as it was, the victims were being carried out five and six a day. In spite of their want of success, the Hakims continued blindly and persistently with their mode of treatment. I walked round examining the patients and determining what I would do. Evidently it was useless taking the poor fellows who were already drained of their blood by the Hakims. I must take the new comers if I was to succeed in the essential object of medical treatment, that of curing the patient. I therefore directed that all new comers--and they poured into the hospital--should be taken to the inner garden and their beds arranged in the vacant rooms of the house there. A sentry was posted at the gate of the inner garden, with orders to shoot any Hakim attempting to enter. One room contained a heterogeneous collection of European drugs and surgical instruments. In a small room on the roof lived a Hindustani hospital assistant--the gentlemanly dipsomaniac whom I have already introduced. There were two other Hindustani assistants, but they were utterly and hopelessly ignorant. These men happily had spared the patients. They had done no work at all. I had, therefore, the first day seven or eight new cases secluded from the rest under my own hands, and, excluding bribery, beyond the reach of Hakims. After some months, when I had become known, I found whom I could trust, and did not take such stringent precautions. [Sidenote: Afghan Appreciation of Medical Treatment.] I made a preliminary round of my cases with a note-book, for, at that time, distinguish Mahomed Akbar from Mahomed Hassan, and him from Mahomed Hussain or Gul Mahomed, I could not. I then made a second round with medicines, which were administered before me; for the possibility of bribery occurred to me, and I knew the Hakims would shrink from nothing to bring discredit upon a Feringhi interloper. My wards filled rapidly, and for a week I had no deaths, the fever yielding readily to quinine. The difference in the mortality after European and after native treatment was naturally striking, and the news spread far and wide, especially among the soldiers, the poorer townsfolk and the peasants, so that I soon had far more work before me than I could possibly get through in the day. The way my time was allotted may be interesting.