Page:Groves - Memoir of Anthony Norris Groves, 3rd edition.djvu/88

CHAPTER V.

a.d. 1830.

mr. groves seeks access to the poor of bagdad through the exercise of his surgical skill—the language and population—religious condition of the people—mr. groves takes a house and commences an arabic school—armenian schoolmaster—satisfactory progress of the children—the jews at bagdad—political state of the pashalic—quarrels of the nominal christians—dangerous state of the country—approach of pestilence—mr. groves’s feelings at the close of his first year’s residence at bagdad.

Soon after his arrival in Bagdad, Mr. Groves met with Dr. Montefiore, who was about to return to Bombay, and learned from him that he might obtain free access to the poor by giving them the advantage of his medical skill. “Dr. M. had begun with twelve patients, the next day he had seventy-two, on the third day the street in which he lived was filled, and he was obliged to give it up.” Mr. Groves therefore felt that general gratuitous practice in so large a city would occupy all his time, and he determined to confine himself to one branch, that of diseases of the eye, to which natives of the East seem peculiarly liable. In this undertaking he was very successful, and, by his operations in cases of cataract, many who had been blind for years were restored to sight.

After some deliberation as to the language which would be most useful to them among a mixed population, Mr. Groves determined that he and his sons should learn Arabic. He found it was spoken by five-sixths of the inhabitants of Bagdad, and almost through the whole extent of country from Bussora to Diarbekir, north and south, and from Diarbekir to the Mediterranean, east and west.