Wonderful! quoth the doctor—and out came the tablets, whereupon was inscribed, “Cured of typhus fever, Mehemed Agha, an upholsterer, by drinking a pailful of pickled cabbage juice.”
Soon after the worthy doctor was called to another patient, a Yaghlikgee, or dealer in embroidered handkerchiefs, suffering from the same malady. He forthwith prescribed “a pailful of pickled cabbage juice.”
On calling the next day to congratulate his patient on his recovery, he was astonished to be told, the man was dead!
The Oriental Esculapius, in his bewilderment as to these phenomena, came to the safe conclusion, and duly noted it in his memoranda, that, “Although in cases of typhus fever, pickled cabbage juice is an efficient remedy, it is not, however, to be used unless the patient be by profession an upholsterer!”
Fortunately for the community, this branch of science is improving in Turkey, and there are numerous graduates from the medical college, who are employed in the army, and by the inhabitants in general.
CHAPTER XVIII.
WESTERN PREJUDICES, AND EASTERN TOLERATION.
The etiquettes and punctilious ceremonies of society were doubtless unknown in the primitive condition of our race.
Modern civilization has put the world into fetters with its laws and by-laws, which seem the result of some secret combination, as they are generally known only to the initiated, while the less fortunate mass of the communities become the laughing-stock of these wiseacres.