Travels in Southeastern Europe

The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham.

ROUND ABOUT RESNA. 133 driven mad, and went about barking like dogs. The only one of these I had the chance of examining proved not to be insane at all, but suffering from a peculiar form of hysteria which I have met with before in other parts of the Peninsula. It is not at all uncommon among the Balkan Slavs, and also, I am told, in Russia, and the so-called 'barking' is a sort of hiccough, caused by rapid and spasmodic contractions of the diaphragm. The local remedy, often efficacious, is to direct the patient to go to church on some special saint's day, to pray for relief and to abstain from making the noise while the service is going on. If she succeeds in doing so she is generally cured. This is an interesting example of cure by suggestion. In most cases the result of the insurrection had filled them with a dull astonishment. They said they had been told that in the late Greco-Turkish War the Turkish soldiers had behaved very well, and that they had not expected any outrages or deeds of violence. They seemed to think they might kill without exciting reprisals. With their experience of long years and the tradition of centuries this sounds incredible, but they told me so repeatedly. Of the future they seemed to take no heed, and the past was already dulled. They lived from day to day with a sort of bovine stolidity, heavy, apathetic, interested chiefly in petty quarrels, and seeing that they got as much ' relief ' as the people next door. In the villages that were half Mohammedan, there had, as a rule, been no fighting, and therefore little
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Title
The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham.
Author
Durham, Mary Edith, 1863-1944.
Canvas
Page 133
Publication
London :: Nelson,
[1905]
Subject terms
Eastern question (Balkan)
Balkan Peninsula -- Description and travel.

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https://name.umdl.umich.edu/ans3900.0001.001
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https://quod.lib.umich.edu/b/bosnia/ans3900.0001.001/140

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"The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham." In the digital collection Travels in Southeastern Europe. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/ans3900.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed April 30, 2025.
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