The only medical men were, as a rule, barbers, who added to their proper profession that of letting blood for their customers when it was considered necessary. Bleeding of course used to be in favour in Europe generally, and it is still largely practised in the East. There are a great many people in my native country who think that a periodical loss of blood purifies the system, and have themselves bled accordingly. The early part of the summer is a favourite time for the operation, before the season for eating fresh fruit arrives. Blood is let either by a lancet, or else by means of leeches which are applied to the arms and legs. The men who were charged with my father's treatment were an old barber and a professional blood-letter. They used all their choicest ointments, making my father's thumb worse every day. They used to criticise each other's skill in surgery. The professional blood-letter told us that he was once an army surgeon, and it was his boast that during the Crimean War he had cut off the arms and legs of dozens of wounded soldiers. He doubtless facilitated the departure of these unfortunates to the place whither he ultimately sent my father. In spite of his experiences, however, he did not amputate my parent's arm, which might have prevented the gangrene which proved fatal. My mother's efforts to obtain the condemnation of the drunken official, as the murderer of her husband, failed. He was only sentenced to a few months of imprisonment, and to pay us an indemnity of about five hundred pounds. Perhaps I shall be pardoned for a slight digression here. I laid some emphasis on the backward condition of the art of surgery in my native town, but I do not mean thereby that Turkey has been altogether behindhand in the art of medicine. In some particulars she has even led the way. For instance, she may claim the discovery of inoculation as a defence against smallpox, and it is worth while recalling the fact that Lady Mary Wortley Montagu introduced the treatment into England from Turkey many years before Jenner made his first experiment. As Lady Mary saw it, inoculation was performed with lymph taken from human beings, but according to the _Tarikhi Jevdet_ (vol. ii., p. 341, press mark Turk. 9, British Museum Library), inoculation was also performed in a manner suggestive of calf-lymph. A Turkoman of the pastoral tribes in Asia Minor was paying a visit to Constantinople, and he saw the children being inoculated with other children's lymph. He said that in his own country the lymph was taken from the fingers of those who milked the cows. The book, moreover, states that Lady Mary heard of the Turkoman's statement, though she does not mention this in her letter.[1]