1 employe!I as a prophylactic or curative; and, I clave to say, with
2 aspect to the plague, if might be considered as a specific.
3 During mv stay at Constantinople I frequently had an oppor¬
4 tunity of maleing the obse rvation that many individuals, especi¬
5 ally Armenians, wore a string, to which was attached a bean,
6 called Sirychnos Faba St. Tgnatii, as a preventive against the
7 plague. Having been informed that this bean was acknowledged
8 to he an effective one, T administered it in minute (loses, as a
9 medicine, and that with the best success. The particulars "'ill
10 be mentioned in the course of this work.
11 Among the above-mentioned private houses in which they
12 relied on my medical skill, was that of M. Shabert. '1 he head
13 of this respectable family had bent formerly invested with the
14 office of English interpreter.
15 ’ft is the duty of a physician to have patience when he has
16 occasion to attend old ladies; and thus I must crave the reader’s
17 indulgence while 1 relate what Mrs. Shabert communicated tome.
18 She began thus:—“ A young Greek stabbed mv son with a
19 stiletto; and, at the moment when he was about to cry out for
20 assistance, the Greek was so malicious as to thrust the weapon
21 into his mouth and cut a blood-vessel, from which a violent
22 bleeding eriimed, and it could only be stopped by immediate
23 suraical assistance. He was taken to the consulate, in front of
24 which it happened, and where lie was employed. J3v the appli¬
25 cation of red-hot iron, the blood was stanched; but two or three
26 days subsequently, the bleeding began afresh, and the patient
27 felt exhausted; when the bleeding was renewed for the third
28 time, he became much worse. On the ensuing night, lie was
29 . 1 estless, and in a slate of great perturbation from his dreams. It
30 appeared to him ns if his adversary was running towards him,
31 with the stiletto in Ids grasp. The attendant physicians, think¬
32 ing this symptom to be the forerunner of another flow of blood,
33 declared the patient’s state to be-very critical, being persuaded
34 that, upon another bleeding, death was inevitable. In this
35 awful pewit ion, tire family proposed to the physicians to allow
36 them a trial of homoeopathy. They readily coivented, in the