C H A P T E R X L .
R U S S IA N SAM A R K AN D .
V is it to military hospital.— Sart d is e a s e : its characteristics and
treatment.— Hospitals for native women and men.— A case of
spastic paralysis.— Russian and native education.— Turkistan
troops, forts, arms, and uniforms.— Education and morals of
officers and .men.— Samarkand bazaar, ¡population, and industries—
Characteristics of woven products.— Public-houses
of Zarafshan, and the Turkistan liquor traffic.— Governor’s in- .
formation respecting the soil, crops, and trees of the province.
— Attendants for our journey, and Asiatic interpreter.— Purchase
-of antiquities and .distribution of the Scriptures.— General
Ivanoff.
ON Friday, the morning after our arrival at
Samarkand, General Korolkoff took us to visit
the military hospital. It was situated without the
city on the south-west, beyond the Russian town,
having two kinds of erections— namely, well-built
houses of brick for the winter, and summer tents,
from which latter the patients were to be transferred,
if I remember rightly, on the morrow, September 30th.
T h e general arrangements were similar to those we
had seen at the military hospital in Tashkend, but
on a smaller scale, there being only 117 patients.
T he skin diseases were the most interesting, and
among them a case of reshta or kind of guinea worm,
peculiar to Bokhara and adjacent towns. The medical
officer kindly gave me a specimen of the parasite,
which I brought safely to London. T o this I sha 1
return when we reach its proper locality, Bokhara,
but we saw likewise at Samarkand several cases of an
endemic skin disease, common in Turkistan, resembling
lupus erythematodes, and known among the Russians
as Sart sickness, or disease. It is the Afghan yaria
or plague, and is known also as pasha-khurda, or
consuming fly.
This disease, which takes the form of eruptions of
the skin, prevails over a considerable portion of
Turkistan. It more frequently appears on the face,
and spreads to the upper extremities, the neck, the
lower extremities, and the body itself.* Among natives
the disease appears almost always during early childhood,
though it is also seen among adults of every
age up to fifty. I had an opportunity of testing its
prevalence among children in the boys’ school at
Samarkand, where’ out of a class of 16, only three
had escaped, and I was told that the finer the skin
of a child, the more likely is it to be attacked. The
disease is not painful, but sometimes there is experienced
an uneasiness or a slight itching. If left alone,
* The disease is diagnosed by the appearance of a spot of a round
or irregular shape, two to upwards of five lines in diameter. The colour
of this spot is at first slightly red, it then becomes a bright red, and
sometimes a reddish yellow, and even blue. To the touch the spot
seems most solid at its edges. This thickening, in time, becomes
knotty, and spreads over the surface of the skin. After this follows
suppuration. The sores issue from each separate node, and, in proportion
as these soften, run into each other, until at last they form one
large and open sore. This gradually dries up, leaving a yellowish
brown, or dark-coloured scurf. I f the disease be not cured, the suppuration
will spread more and more, but always within ascertainable
limits. When it heals, each wound leaves a scar or gash proportionate
to that of the surface which the sore covered.