A correspondent of the Times, writing from Erzeroum, makes in
a very grave and well-considered manner a dreadful charge against the Turks. He says the higher officers positively refuse to allow amputations, holding it better that their own soldiers should die than that they should live useless pensioners on the State. We have no doubt, from the evidence adduced, that the fact is as stated, and can well imagine that this cynical reason was given. to Europeane, but justice must be done even to Turks, and their real motive is probably not so bad as this,—which, indeed, as- they never pay anybody who cannot enforce payment, would not influence them. All Mussulmane at heart despise medicine as an interference with God's decree, and they have a special horror of amputation, believing that the body so treated will rise with- out the removed limb. Azrael, when he calls the Faithful to the judgment, cannot be bothered hunting for the separated bits. An Act was once passed by the British Government in India to take advantage of this belief, directing the bodies of dead Moplahs to be hurried to ashes, and the dread- fulness to Mussulmans of execution by blowing from guns arises from the same theory. The Turks, in this instance, are rather superstitious than cruel.
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