The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1884-03-06
CONSTANTINOPLE DOCTORS.
How tho Sick are Treated In tne Capital
Of the Turks.

CONSTANTINOPLE DOCTORS.
How tho Sick are Treated in tns Capital
Of the Turks.
The houses are close together and tai
and gloomy there is no sunshine, ano
the lower house walls are 80 damp that
they have turned green with slime. The
streets are always wet with filth that
often comes above shoetops, and the
stencil that rises is worse than the air in
the underground passages of a China.
town. Yet the people live and eat and
sleep here, and when they get sick-as
they invariably do-they doctor them
selves after the most approved quackery
in the Turkish pharmacy. The priests
are the chief physicians, but men sell
patent medicines on the Turkish street
corners with much the same volubility
as in New York. They are very conser.
vative, these Turkish doctors, resisting
sturdily the new and clinging tenaciously
to old opinions. Most of their practice
is mere fetichism, and they lug astrology
or Divine interference into the smallest
cases of collie or the toothache. For a
nation of fatalists the Turks have more
faith than o.thirds the Christians
living. Nine cases out of ten where
they are cured at all, it is their faith and
not the remedy that cures them.
INVOKING THE DEITY.
Sickness they believe is the result of
offending some deity or spirit, and rever-
sing the process they endeavor to placate
the deity through the priests, and thus
coax him into removing the plague from
them. The dervishes being the most
holy men among the priests are esteemed
the most celebrated doctors. Each
Thursday, after their peculiar rites,
towels and the clothes of sick persons,
too weak to come personally, are broug bit
to them in the temple and laid on the
floor before the altar. A bottle of water
is then carried round the circle of der
wishes and rendered holy by being
breathed on by each one in turn: The
high priest is the last to do this, and
then taking the bottle, he bears it above
his head to the altar, where, after sundry
salaams and mutterings, he walks back
and forward several times over the
clothes and then sprinkles them With
water from the bottle. This is supposed
to endow both towels aBd clothes with
miraculous curative properties, and they
are taken away by the sick mems friends
at great cost for rubbing purposes or to
be worn as cure. For the "trampling"
cure, those who are able to come to the
temple in person.
CRUELTY TO CHILDREN.
A woman brought in a baby not more
than II months old. 1t was weak and
pinched, and not knowing what allied it
she had brought it to the priest i'll hope
of cure. A mat was spread before the
alter and the child laid on it, face down
ward, on the floor. Then the high priest,
leaning q hand on the shoulder of an
attendant on each side, 80 as not to press
too heavily, put his foot on the child's
loins, settled it to get firm foothold,
and then raising himself, stood upright
on the poor little body. Then he stepped
back, and lifting the child soothed and
caressed it with tenderness that showed
him utterly unconscious of any brutality
and also his assurance in the efficacy and
necessity for the remedy. Two other
babies received the same treatment, and
then FIVE young girls ran in and lay duwn
side by side on the mat. There was ap'
parently nothing the matter with them,
but their friends we're afraid there might
be and so brought them to forestall con-
tingencies.
NOVEL TREATMENT.
The priest sprinkled them with water
from the holy bottle, and then, discard:
ing the help of bis attendants, stepped
up on to the nearest girl and walked
several times across the row. At every
step his feet sank into the soft flesh, but
he kept below the waist, and only an
occasional grunt showed that they felt it
at all. Some of them appeared to think
it very funny, and when the priest had
finished they all got up laughing, kissed
his hand with a great show of reverence,
and ran nimbly out. The only patient
not entirely stoical was an old Turkish
officer, with rheumatism in his limbs.
They brought him in on crutches, with
his legs all bent and stiff, and like the
others he was laid out on the mat. Then
the priest mounted him, beginning at the
waist, and inside of two minutes his legs
were straightened out as limp as carpet
rags, and the old priest was walking up
and down him as cheerfully as if there
was no such thing as feeling in him.
The officers face turned white as his
shirt, and once or twice he yelled invol.
UNFAIRLY, but the priest paid no atten-
ton, and in the end the effect seemed to
be good, for when it was over and they
raised him to his feet, although he ap.
peared rather wilted, he stood alone and
walked away without his crutches.
THE SWEATING. STONE"
Another popular cure is the sweating
stone," 30 called, in the mosque of st.
Sophia. 1t is large pillar near the left
hand entrance, or a sort of greenish-
white stone. In this, about the height Of
q mans head, is a small hole, hardly
large enough to contain the entire fingers.
Through some peculiar natural property
of the stone, the inside Of this hole is al.
ways covered with salty moisture. No
matter how often this is wiped away, it
instantly returns, and this Sweat" of the
stone the Turks credit with miraculous
curative properties. Hundreds come
here, it is said, to rub their deceased
members with the healing moisture.
The graves of many of the dead deryishes,
too, who in life had extra luck as tramp
lers," have been converted into shrines,
to which sick persons make pilgrimages
in hopes of cure. They tie on the graf.
ings before these tombs long strips of
flannel and wool-black, yellow and red
torn from their clothes, and do not for
get to leave plaster or 80 in the money
basin before departing. This is the cure
for fevers and colds, and also protective
against the "evil eye" This fear Of the
"evil eye" is as strong among the Turks
o~l e, at