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ANATOMICAL MUSEUM.

all European Christians are under the protection of their respective flags, and should they be convicted of any misdemeanour, they must be handed over to their consuls.

The laboratory contained a good chemical apparatus, and the dissecting-room several subjects. This latter indispensable requisite to medical education, it would be scarcely worth mentioning, but that it occurred among a people whose strong religious prejudices prohibited even the touching of a dead body in some cases; and the introduction of the novel science of anatomy, was one of the most difficult things Mohammad Alee had to enforce for a long time. He in the first place referred it to the priesthood, who obstinately set their faces against it, declaring it utterly incompatible with the religion of the Prophet of Mekka. The Básha's answer, that it was his royal wish and pleasure that they should legalize the act, and that, if they did not speedily do so, it was more than probable they themselves should form material for the first experiment in this branch of the practical sciences, soon brought them to reconcile their prejudices with his unbending will.

Attached to the school is a museum, under the direction of the anatomical professor, Dr. Sicher, containing the usual anatomical preparations, besides a daily increasing zoological collection, and some good wax models-principally the work of an Arab boy. The progress of this collection is an object of much interest, and the most beneficial results may be expected from it by the lover of science, as well as the naturalist. As yet, the want of funds to support this museum has prevented its being as extensive as it might be in a country offering so wide a field; but the preparations are well done, and, like all such infant institutions, it wisely gives a place to every thing that is offered to it. I should hope, that as many of the animals in it have not yet been introduced into our museums, we might be able to procure some in return for a set of wax models, or some such articles, which could not be procured there.

There is a printing establishment connected with the hospital, where several of the most approved works on medical science are translated into, and printed in Arabic. The chemical laboratory is a handsome, spacious apartment, well furnished with apparatus, and all other necessaries; and I was informed by the professors that chemistry was a science in which the pupils took great

interest, and made considerable progress. Besides professional education, general literary and religious instruction is provided for these students. There is a mosque inside the walls, and two or three Ulemas, or Mohammadan priests, also reside in the establishment.

The Europeans connected with this, and indeed with most of the recent improvements in Egypt, complain that the pupils are removed from their care, and sent into active service too soon. In other departments of the state, they say, this might be passed over, and would eventually find its remedy; but in this case it is a serious error, for if it be true of other sciences, that a little knowledge is dangerous, how much more so is it in medicine, where the uneducated, or partly educated, are emboldened by that little knowledge to sins of commission in addition to those of omission. I have often heard it said of this, as well as of all the other colleges and places of instruction, "Oh, what could you possibly expect from a set of illiterate brutes, whom the Básha took but yesterday from the plough or the Nile bucket? Surely, you do not suppose that such persons, without any previous ideas, can be taught science." But what other native material had Mohammad Alee but this? And although this race are at present illiterate, and cannot be expected to have the same ideas as Europeans of that rank in society who would enter learned professions, will not the next generation be of a superior description? True it is, he keeps them too short a time, and many are removed after three years; but the demands of his large army have compelled him to do this; and the army must be without medical assistance entirely, or have such as three years' education afford, a period which was not required by countries more to the northwest of the meridian than Egypt not many years ago. * I confess I felt particularly disgusted at hearing the Europeans,

* Those who raised this outcry against the insufficiency of education in the Egyptian doctors, would do well to inquire what description of men it was that the lives of British soldiers, and more particularly British sailors, were entrusted to during the last war; and they will find, that it was to persons much inferior in medical education to those at present in Egypt. Nay, at the present moment they will find practitioners, patronised by the public, and permitted by the government and the colleges, in every town and village in Great Britain, who have no such claims to support.

and even some of the instructors themselves in other departments, who receive the pay of the Básha, and whose livelihood depends upon the existence of those institutions, sneering at his attempts to revive the literature and arts of Egypt in the persons of its present inhabitants.

Mindful not only of the lives of his soldiers and subjects, but even of the lowest female in his dominions, he has re-introduced the famed midwives of Egypt; and I daily met a French lady, a pupil of the celebrated Parisian accoucheuse, Mad. Boivin, driving in a gig through the streets of Cairo. "The importance of a maternity was sensibly felt in Egypt, where women in labour were intrusted to the care of the most ignorant and superstitious midwives. In 1832, Clot Bey proposed and obtained the establishment of a school for midwives; twenty negresses and Abyssinians were collected in a place for this purpose, under the direction of a sage femme, of the maternity at Paris, an Arabian physician, who had graduated in France, and a Ulema to instruct in religion and literature. The pupils read and write Arabic, and learn the theory and practice of midwifery. This school of obstetricity daily acquires the importance it deserves. The number of pupils now amounts to fifty, and their instruction is confided to the five most skilful among them, under the direction and surveillance of the sage femme, physician, and Ulema."*

The civil hospital in the Esbekeyah contains three hundred patients; and there is also in Grand Cairo a school of veterinary surgery, with one hundred and twenty students. "Thus," says Mr. Waghorn, "in the regeneration of Egypt, medicine has been, and ought to be one of the most powerful instruments.

"The ascendancy which its ministers exercise throughout the whole society by their mission of philanthropy, has rendered the union of two people, essentially different, more intimate—exacted gratitude, encouraged devotedness, and has broken down the barrier that existed between the worshippers of Christ and those of the prophet—a superstitious but popular hatred.

"The devotedness of the European physicians-their heroic struggle against the plague-their praiseworthy and entire dis

* Mr. Waghorn's Tract, "Egypt as it is in 1838," document B, furnished by Mucktar Bey, Minister of Public Instruction.

regard of their own lives, have produced invaluable results; but it was especially the formation of the school at Abouzabel which gave a new era to medicine in Egypt, a glorious epoch for the enlightened sovereign.

"Initiated in the different sciences which belong to the art of medicine, and which constitute the well-informed man, the medical pupils became so many apostles, destined to spread the light of knowledge in the midst of a people still enslaved by prejudice and ignorance."

Having heard much of the extraordinary powers of the famous magician, we were anxious to see him, and to judge for ourselves how far he had a right to even that celebrity with which travellers in this land of wonders have invested him. And now I must say, that no one was more inclined to give a fair trial to the powers of magic-more willing to be astonished, or wished more to see what others are said to have seen than I was; and for myself and my friends who witnessed his attempt—and which was certainly to us an imposition-I am compelled to confess it was a miserable and complete failure. My narrative is simply this: we sent to the magician in the morning, desiring his presence that night. While we were at dinner, about three o'clock, he came, in order to obtain a dollar to make preparations; this he did as well to reconnoitre, as to make sure of the money. He sat for some time, and appeared particularly watchful and attentive to every thing going forward. In the evening he came again, and a great number of travellers from different countries had assembled in the room of the hotel to witness his performance.

The magician appeared to be a middle-aged man, of rather swarthy complexion; with a long and silky brown beard, and exceeding quickness and brilliancy of eye. He wore a darkcoloured gibbeh, or outer garment, and a green turban. A chafing-dish with some lighted charcoal was brought in, together with writing materials. He seated himself on the floor opposite the chafing-dish, and desired that a young boy about nine or ten years of age might be brought to him. A second person, whom we had not at first observed, and who sat at the door among a crowd of servants and the people of the hotel, instantly produced a little boy, who I soon discovered to be the usual attendant of the magician; however, he was allowed to proceed in his own way. The boy was placed opposite to him on the other side of

the chafing-dish, and the man wrote some characters in Arabic on slips of paper; one of these he placed on the forehead of the boy, underneath his turboosh or cap; the others he burned from time to time in the fire; he then made some characters upon another piece of paper, and crumpling it up so as to form a cup, he placed it in the boy's right hand, and poured some of the ink into the hollow of the paper, desiring the boy to keep his eye steadily fixed upon the black shining mirror of the ink. He then commenced a kind of incantation, repeating the same words over and over again as fast as he possibly could, rocking his body backward and forward all the time, and occasionally throwing some incense on the fire, which rose in fumes, and almost enveloped the operators within it.

After some time he asked the boy if he saw any thing, and being answered twice or thrice in the negative, he continued the incantation with redoubled energy; at length the boy said he saw two people sweeping the street, and then a man on a white horse approach; that the sweeping ceased, and he sat down on the deewan; presently the figures vanished, and the magician demanded of us what or whom we would have appear in the mirror. A gentleman present desired that a lady of his acquaintance in Syria should be brought up; this lady was de