Читать книгу By-ways on Service: Notes from an Australian Journal онлайн

30 страница из 66

The military Medical Officer in this country is as considerable a personage as the medicine-man amongst the American Indians. In a land where the rainfall is not worth mentioning, and the sun is hot, and the natural drainage poor, and sanitation little considered by the natives, he is a man whose word in camp is law. He speaks almost daily, through camp orders or through pamphlets of his own compiling, imperative words of warning, and in the daily camp inspection the Commandant is his mere satellite. "Avoid," says he (in effect) in his fifth philippic against dirt, "the incontinent consumption of fruit unpeeled and raw or unwashed vegetables. Therefrom proceed dysentery, enteritis, Mediterranean fever, parasitic diseases, and all manner of Egyptian scourges. Would you fly the plagues of Egypt, abhor the Arab hawker and the native beer-shop." Certain quarters are hygienically declared "out of bounds." They include "all liquor-shops and cafés, except those specified hereafter ..."; the village of Abbassieh; the village adjoining the Tombs of the Caliphs (the most squalid in Cairo). It is for other reasons than hygienic that the gardens of the Sultan's palace at Koubbeh and the Egyptian State-railways are placed out of bounds too.