A SCENE IN DAMASCUS.
"Doctor Bronson says this dreadful disease was once very common in Europe, and nearly every city and town had its leper hospitals. From the sixth to the thirteenth centuries it was spread from one end of Europe to the other, particularly after the wars of the Crusades. An order of chivalry, under the name of the Knights of St. Lazarus (named after Lazarus the beggar), had for its special mission the care of victims of leprosy, and after they were expelled from Jerusalem in the twelfth century they established a hospital at Paris. If you have been in Paris you will remember the Gare St. Lazare, the terminal station of the Western Railway, which is close by the Rue St. Lazare, and a walk of five or six minutes from the Grand Opera House. The leper hospital of Paris was in this neighborhood, and the name of the order of monks that founded it is preserved in the street and railway-station.
"Leprosy has almost entirely disappeared from Europe; it is seen occasionally in Scandinavia and Italy, and a few cases have been reported in Spain. It exists in the East, but is not so prevalent as it was a thousand years ago, and once in a while you will hear of a leper in America and the islands of the Pacific Ocean. Doctor Bronson says he was once invited by Professor Pardee, Dean of the Medical College of New York, to see a case of leprosy from one of the mountain counties of Virginia. The patient was a negro, and, as far as the doctors could ascertain, he was suffering from leprosy of the same type as we find to-day in Damascus.
PORTRAIT OF ABD-EL-KADR.
"We passed the house of Abd-el-Kader, the Arab chief who fought the French in Algeria for a long time, but was finally conquered, and required to choose some place not in Africa for his residence. He selected Damascus, and has lived here ever since, with the exception of an occasional visit to Paris, where he is always treated with a great deal of respect. At the time of the massacre in 1860 he sheltered a great many Christians in his house, and did everything in his power to stop the bloodshed. When the war broke out between France and Germany he offered his military services to the country that had conquered him, but the government did not think it good policy to accept them.