The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1909-09-15
WAYS OF THE ORIENT.
Queer Ideas About AIIeviating
 Bodily Suffering.
MAGIC CURES OF THE TURKS.


 Children Are Subjected-Bunches of Garlic and Strings of Blue Beads as Panaceas Against All Kinds of Ills. A stone strikes some part of the body
 of an oriental and inficts a wound.
 The train of ideas that this accident
 would produce in his mind would run
 something like this: The stone is the
 cause of pain, the cause of the wound. ItSis the principal origin of the trouble.
 But the essence of every origin is hid
 den, secret and therefore sacred. The
 stone becomes an awe inspiring fetich
 The wound is neglected. The fetich
 has to be propitiated. This simple H. lustration is borne out and supported
 by everyday experience which med ical men encounter in the east
 Another instance may be derived from among the lower classes of the Greek population, of Constantinople. A child falls and cuts his head. The first thought of the parent is to be sure not to wash and to bind up the wound, still less to call medical assistance, however grave the cut may turn out to be. This is always an afterthought, which very often comes so late that the help of surgeon can prove of no use.
 The first thing the father or mother of the injured child thinks of doing is to pour over the shoulder upon the place of the accident a Hbatiop of wine or sugared water and to whisper in per forming this some mysterious formula supposed to possess supernatural eff cacy against every form of evil.
 The Moslems are addicted to the queerest practices for purposes of heal ing or alleviating bodily pain. A Turk. for instance, in distress or suffering from some disease, however severe, knows of no better remedy than to fix a piece of his dress, torn off with true oriental eQuanimity, to an iron bar of some saints tomb or to drink water from a tumbler into which he has pre- viously put sheet of paper with writ ings from the Koran. Sometimes he will take a jar, the interior of which has been written all over with strange formulae and signs. He will then fill it with water, wait till these formulae and signs have been thoroughly dis solved and drink the singular solution with an absolute faith in it's wonder working efficacy.
 Sheltered by the somber expresses of the great Mohammedan cemetery at Scutarf (the ancient Chrysopolis on the Asiatic coast of the .Bosporus) there stands in picturesque solitude the tomb of horse. Every Friday afternoon Turkish mothers carry to that tomb their crippled children to be submitted by select ''khodja" priesD to an ex- traordinary course of treatment These children are dragged, with their dis eased limbs dangling over the hillock. from one end of the tomb to the other and then back again in the same fash ion. The occult influence emanating from this 'hillock is supposed to be an all efficient panacea.
 < It is not difficult to trace in this case the crude, imperfect association of ideas. The horse has long been con- sidered an emblem of vigor, typifying, as Ruslin says, "the flow and force of life" Hence the belief of the ori- ental, inherited, no doubt, from the Greeks, in the all .conquering virtue and influence of occult and mysterious ef1uvia which are supposed to emanate constantly from a horses tomb.
 The wearing of a necklace of blue beads or of garlic as potent means of keeping away disease or of warding off the evil eye is quite a universal matter of sincere belief in the whole of Turkey. This superstition is shared, as is well known, by the lower classes of many country in civilized eastern Europe. There, however, it is not so universal and fragrant as in the orient.
 There is scarcely a house in, the Moslem, Greek and Armenian districts of the population of ConstantinopIe which has not hanging above it's en- trance door a collection of garlic and scarcely a beast of toll which has not attached to some part of it a string of blue beads. Among the uneducated 1t is impossible to find an individual who does not pin absolute faith to the all healing power of such charms, of blue beads, which are supposed to be an unfailing panacea against every possible i'll.
 Less general is the belief in the east in the baleful influence of the planets Saturn and Mars upon the constitution of the human body, upon it's four car dinal humors-blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. These planets are considered by some orientals, especial ly in the far south, as the unmistak- able causes of all sorts of ailments. Woe unto him who begins any work when Saturn or Mars is in the ascend Plain Dealer.