His skill in sanitary matters and his surgical knowledge stood him in good stead. A good head for mechanics, much common sense, and a readiness of resource had already enabled him to save many of his Gitano friends from the hospitals they so much dreaded. He could mend their broken limbs with extemporised splints, reduce dislocations, and dress wounds antiseptically; and by cheering them by the infusion of his own light-heartedness, shorten their period of convalescence. To be sure, they had their own well-tried methods of cure, which were not so contemptible, though unrecognised in the schools. Having small faith in drugs, and smaller still in their wholesale administration by ignorant and unthinking practitioners, his medicine chest seldom needed replenishing. He valued his opium (_Mash Allah_, the gift of God, the Turks call it), but administered it with scrupulous care. Quinine was indispensable, and a dozen other well-tried remedies enabled him to work many a cure. But cold water and fresh air, wholesome food and temperance, want few aids from medicine for the ills of man. The wiser the physician the fewer the drugs, and by the length of your doctor’s prescription you may estimate the shallowness of his pretence to wisdom. Sanitary engineers have done so much for the improvement of the health of towns, that the low death-rate in London and other English cities is more to be attributed to their agency than to improved methods of medical treatment. The wonder is that Spain and Italy are not continually decimated by pestilence. We may see what was the state of England in the time of the Black Death and the Great Plague by the condition of Naples and Granada under recent cholera visitations; the most elementary sanitary precautions being not only neglected but apparently impossible of comprehension by the people generally, so that the soil is always ready for the seeds of disease.