1 at Cairo, and that muriatic acid has not always the quality of
2 dissolving stony concretions. Not finding any dissolving medi-
3 cine that would act universally, I was obliged to effect the cure
4 of stone in the bladder bv an operation with the instrument. In
5 Syria there were also Arabs, known as stone-operators, who
6 adhered to the old method of Celsus, i.e ., to bring the stone down
7 by introducing the fingers into the rectum, and cutting it out
8 through the perinoeum ; but I preferred the apparatus altus,
9 where the stone is cut out from the bladder, through the pyrami-
10 dal muscle of the belly, which produced a very great sensation,
11 and obtained for me the name of a skilful operator. The first
12 operation for the stone I made was on Mount Lebanon. After-
13 wards I performed similar operations at Damascus, Bagdad,
14 Persia, India, and even at Bokhara, as the reader will find.
15 In the year 1822, I began to vaccinate in Syria, with a lvmph
16 received from Aleppo, which acted well. Two particular cases
17 which occurred at the villages in the neighbourhood of Tripoli
18 (Syria) deserve especially to be mentioned here. The small-
19 pox raged epidemically in those places, in a horrible manner,
20 killing adults as well as infants, without any distinction. The
21 use of vaccination was as little known in Syria, as it was in
22 Europe before the time of Jenner, and I was just in the centre,
23 or rather in the focus of that epidemical disease. A widow
24 having two children, one son and a daughter, the latter of
25 whom she loved and idolized, insisted upon only permitting the
26 male to be inoculated, and if it should prove successful she
27 would allow the operation to be performed on her fondled
28 darling, the daughter. Accordingly I only vaccinated the son.
29 When I visited him, after a lapse of eight days, 1 found the
30 mother in despair, her daughter having during the interval died
31 of the small-pox, whilst the boy was quite well, with large
32 pustules like pearls on his arms; she regretted, but too late,
33 not having followed my advice, and looked upon the event as
34 a punishment from heaven. In another village, not far from the
35 above-mentioned, I had to attend a whole family of eight per-
36 sons, old and young, who were vaccinated all at the same time.