Page:Thirty-five years in the East.djvu/47

Rh muriatic acid. More recently I tried the same remedy with other patients for the malady, but without any success. I deduce from this, that the substances of the stones in the latter cases were not the same as with my patient at Cairo, and that muriatic acid has not always the quality of dissolving stony concretions. Not finding any dissolving medicine that would act universally, I was obliged to effect the cure of stone in the bladder by an operation with the instrument. In Syria there were also Arabs, known as stone-operators, who adhered to the old method of Celsus, i.e., to bring the stone down by introducing the fingers into the rectum, and cutting it out through the perinoeum ; but I preferred the apparatus altus, where the stone is cut out from the bladder, through the pyramidal muscle of the belly, which produced a very great sensation, and obtained for me the name of a skilful operator. The first operation for the stone I made was on Mount Lebanon. Afterwards I performed similar operations at Damascus, Bagdad, Persia, India, and even at Bokhara, as the reader will find.

In the year 1822, I began to vaccinate in Syria, with a lymph received from Aleppo, which acted well. Two particular cases which occurred at the villages in the neighbourhood of Tripoli (Syria) deserve especially to be mentioned here. The small-pox raged epidemically in those places, in a horrible manne r, killing adults as well as infants, without any distinction. The use of vaccination was as little known in Syria, as it was in Europe before the time of Jenner, and I was just in the centre, or rather in the focus of that epidemical disease. A widow having two children, one son and a daughter,the latter of whom she loved and idolized, insisted upon only permitting the male to be inoculated, and if it should prove successful she would allow the operation to be performed on her fondled darling,the daughter. Accordingly I only vaccinated the son. When I visited him, after a lapse of eight days, I found the mother in despair, her daughter having during the interval died of the small-pox, whilst the boy was quite well, with large pustules like pearls on his arms ;she regretted, but too late, not having followed my