DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.12665#0044
A COMFORTLESS SICK-ROOM.
shown prostrated the last remains of my physical
strength. It was eighty or a hundred feet long,
forty feet wide, and about as many high, having on
one side a dead wall—being that of the fortress—
and on the other two large windows without shut-
ters, and the door; the naked floor was of mud,
and so were the walls and ceiling. I looked for
one spot less cheerless than the rest; and finding
at the upper end a place where the floor was ele-
vated about a foot, with a feeling of despondency
I have seldom known, I stretched my mattress in
the extreme corner, and, too far gone to have any
regard to the presence of the governor or his Arab
soldiers, threw myself at full length upon it. I was
sick in body and soul; for, besides the actual and
prostrating debility under which I was labouring, I
had before me the horrible certainty that I was
completely cut off from all medical aid, and from
all the comforts which a sick man wants. I was
ten days from Cairo; to go there in person was
impossible ; and, if I should send, I could not ob-
tain the aid of a physician in less than twenty-five
or thirty days, if at all; and before that I might be
past his help. When I left Cairo Dr. Walne had
set me up, so that I held out tolerably well until I
reached Mount Sinai; and, moreover, had given
me sundry medicines, with directions for their use
under particular circumstances ; but my symptoms
had so completely changed, that the directions, if
not the medicines themselves, were entirely use-
less. In a spirit of desperation, however, I took
shown prostrated the last remains of my physical
strength. It was eighty or a hundred feet long,
forty feet wide, and about as many high, having on
one side a dead wall—being that of the fortress—
and on the other two large windows without shut-
ters, and the door; the naked floor was of mud,
and so were the walls and ceiling. I looked for
one spot less cheerless than the rest; and finding
at the upper end a place where the floor was ele-
vated about a foot, with a feeling of despondency
I have seldom known, I stretched my mattress in
the extreme corner, and, too far gone to have any
regard to the presence of the governor or his Arab
soldiers, threw myself at full length upon it. I was
sick in body and soul; for, besides the actual and
prostrating debility under which I was labouring, I
had before me the horrible certainty that I was
completely cut off from all medical aid, and from
all the comforts which a sick man wants. I was
ten days from Cairo; to go there in person was
impossible ; and, if I should send, I could not ob-
tain the aid of a physician in less than twenty-five
or thirty days, if at all; and before that I might be
past his help. When I left Cairo Dr. Walne had
set me up, so that I held out tolerably well until I
reached Mount Sinai; and, moreover, had given
me sundry medicines, with directions for their use
under particular circumstances ; but my symptoms
had so completely changed, that the directions, if
not the medicines themselves, were entirely use-
less. In a spirit of desperation, however, I took