It was in Sofia that I was called in to attend my first lady patient; and the case is worth noting as an illustration of the difference between Eastern and Western methods of diagnosis. In Turkey a practitioner does not get much to go on in forming an opinion. A wealthy old Turk in the town who had an extensive harem wanted advice for one of his wives, and I was asked to call and see her. I gladly accepted the opportunity, and followed my guides, a couple of eunuchs, and an interpreter to a fine house, where they took me upstairs and halted outside a thick, heavy curtain reaching from the ceiling to the floor. Inside was the harem, an institution which I had always had a scientific curiosity to see, and at last I felt that my ambition in this direction was to be realized. A few low spoken words in Turkish were whispered at the edge of the curtain by a tall black-garbed eunuch, and then I heard the rustle of draperies approaching on the other side. A low toned colloquy ensued between the eunuch, who seemed to be threatening, and my interesting patient, whose accents had in them a touch of plaintive entreaty. Presently a white and beautifully moulded arm was shyly insinuated through the space between the wall and the edge of the curtain, while the eunuch bade me, through the mediumship of the interpreter, diagnose the complaint from which the fair one suffered and prescribe a remedy. The hand was small and finely formed, and above the wrist was a heavy bangle of beaten gold. I felt the pulse, which was fluttering and unsteady, and clasped the white and tremulous fingers, feeling that with such slight data to go upon any treatment that I could prescribe would not be likely to enhance my reputation. Accordingly I demanded to be admitted, in order that I might see and question the patient, whom I judged to be a Circassian or a Georgian girl certainly not more than one and twenty, and probably pretty. A long debate ensued, in which the eunuchs, the interpreter, and myself took part; but all my arguments beat unheeded against the rocks of their Oriental stolidity, and the logic of the whole British Medical Society would not have sufficed to persuade the principal eunuch to let me see that unknown lady's tongue. With that thick curtain between us, it was a case of Pyramus and Thisbe and the wall; so I abandoned my quest after the unattainable, and lost the only chance that I--plausible Giaour though I was--ever obtained of seeing the inside of a real Turkish harem. Probably the lady was eventually treated by a _hakem bashi_, or Turkish physician and surgeon, many of whom are very clever in their own way, or by a _jarra bashi_, a sort of "legally qualified medical practitioner," who is recognized as a person entitled to prescribe, but whose abilities do not go much further than drawing teeth or fixing up sore feet.