Travels in Southeastern Europe

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

OCHRIDA. i8i common; enlarged and broken glands in neck and armpits, white tumours in knee and other joints, and very many cases of diseased bone, especially in the hands and feet. These for the most part were too advanced for anything but amputation, and that no one would hear of. I believe the cutting off of heads is the only form that is common in Turkey, and can be performed without fear of scandal. Overcrowding-for sixteen or twenty people think nothing of sleeping in one room if they can crowd into it, and this from choice, not necessity-filth, and the intermarriage of diseased subjects is working far more havoc among the Christian peasants than are the Turks. People would insist on keeping limbs that were mere black and offensive lumps of suffering. But though they could only sit in a corner and die of slow poisoning, nothing would induce them to part with a limb, or a portion of one. At the suggestion of amputation all the relatives set up loud shrieks. When told death was the alternative, they cried, 'Let him die if it is his Kismet!' and the patient echoed the sentiment. The poor wretch had usually come a long day's ride on a pack-animal, and the only thing we could do was to pay his fare back. He invariably preferred death to mutilation. It was a dree scene enough: the man, long, lean, and pallid, with black, sad, sunken orbits, who clung with both hands to his discoloured and suppurating limb, crying, ' Leh! leh leh! let me die let me die!' as he sat in a heap on the floor of a dirty hovel,
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About this Item

Title
The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham.
Author
Durham, Mary Edith, 1863-1944.
Canvas
Page 181
Publication
London :: Nelson,
[1905]
Subject terms
Eastern question (Balkan)
Balkan Peninsula -- Description and travel.

Technical Details

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https://name.umdl.umich.edu/ans3900.0001.001
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https://quod.lib.umich.edu/b/bosnia/ans3900.0001.001/188

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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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