Certain of the fountains of the country are provided with a more or less capacious catch-basin from which animals as well as people may drink. The fastidious are not to be blamed if they insist on seeing their own drinking water taken from the actual flow of the spring and under such conditions as shall not subject them to the washings of other people’s mouths. Often at such places leeches thrive in the water, and where they are known to abound the natives seldom let their animals drink if other available water be near. People, too, are often bothered by the leeches lodging in the sides of the mouth or throat. Those that are swallowed cause no inconvenience, but when tiny leeches lodge in the side of the throat and grow to an uncomfortable size they have to be extracted. One day I was lunching with the local physician, Dr. Philip Ma‛lûf, when a poor woman from el-Bîreh, not finding him at the dispensary, sought him at his home. She was troubled with a leech which had grown to uncomfortable size in her throat and was using up too much of the blood needed in her system. After the parasite was removed she haggled about the price of the operation. At another time I saw a little girl sitting on a chair in the sun in front of the doctor’s dispensary. The doctor said that her leech was too difficult of observation and approach with his tweezers, but that in the warm sun it would be tempted within reach. Medical assistance in the form of hospital or dispensary facilities is now offered at Hebron, Jaffa, Gaza, Jerusalem, Nâblus, Nazareth, Tiberias, Ṣafed, Haifa, es-Salṭ and Kerak. To these places the peasantry come from the country about, bringing their ills for treatment at the hands of foreign physicians. From the country around Nâblus, for instance, many patients come to receive the skilful attention of the surgeon at the Church Missionary Society Hospital in the city. Among these cases are many suffering with diseased bones. The medical department of the American College at Beirut is an exponent of modern medical science for all Syria. There native physicians are trained in medicine and pharmacy and go to all parts of the Turkish empire, Egypt and the Sudan. The European hospitals in the country are in charge of expert physicians assisted by well-trained nurses. Here and there one meets dumb people. In Râm Allâh is a dumb man, the well-to-do father of a considerable family. He is keen, alert and very skilful at making himself understood by motions. The blind are receiving some attention. Schneller’s school in Jerusalem makes provision for them. Miss Lovell, an English woman, has a small school for blind girls where she works assiduously for their welfare. The French Roman Catholic Sisters care for some.