The next day Mr. Pyne set to work to get the pieces of machinery removed from their cases and put together. Followed by a sergeant and a couple of soldiers of the guard he bustled about vigorously, issuing rapid orders in a mixture of English and broken Hindustani, and Persian, which compound language his workmen soon learnt to understand.

I had received no orders as to attending patients, but hearing from Pyne that there was a City Hospital I rode off with my guard to see what it was like. I found the Hospital was situated in the row of Government buildings erected outside the Erg Palace on the wide poplar-fringed road running between the city and the Sherpur cantonment, which was made by the British and called by them “The Old Mall.” These buildings skirt the gardens outside the Erg Palace on the south and east. Like most of the buildings put up under the direction of the AmÎr, they are better built than most of the other houses in Kabul. Though only of one story they are very lofty, with thick walls, and have glazed windows. The buildings do not open into the street but into the gardens, access to which is obtained by the big gateway on the east side, where we left our horses when we visited the Prince, and by a similar gateway on the south.

In the storeroom of the Dispensary I found on the shelves of glazed cupboards a great many cases of old-fashioned surgical instruments, some of which were marked “Hon. East India Co.,” and on other shelves a large collection of European drugs in their bottles, jars, and parcels. The name of each drug was written in Persian as well as in English characters. These had been ordered from time to time by certain Hindustani Hospital assistants who were in the service of the AmÎr, and who had had charge of the Out-patient Hospital and the European drug stores. The Hospital assistants had not used any great amount of judgment in their orders, nor had they considered expense in the least. I found great quantities of patent medicines warranted to cure every disease under the sun; and of the newer and more expensive drugs of which so much is expected and so little is known. The old tried friends of the Medical Profession, whose cost is reasonable and whose action is known, such as quinine, ipecacuanha, carbonate of ammonia, Epsom salts, were conspicuous by their absence. I enquired what plan had been adopted by the Hindustanis when they were making out their orders, and learnt that they got hold of the price list of some enterprising vendor which had found its way to Kabul through India, and ticking off any drugs or patent mixtures that seemed to promise an easy road to success in treatment, they ordered great quantities of these, regardless of cost and before they had tested them.

The stores were in charge of a Hindustani, who had obtained a medical qualification in Lahore, and who had been in the British service. He showed me a medal, and was reported to be in receipt of a small pension from the Government, though how he received it while in Kabul I never heard.

I reached the Hospital about nine o’clock in the morning, and found myself confronted by some eighty sick Afghans who had heard of the arrival of a “Feringhi doctor,” and were all eager to be cured by him. In the time when Lord Roberts occupied Kabul the regimental surgeons had done good work among the Afghans.

A guard, with fixed bayonet, stood at the door to keep off the crush; he did not use the bayonet, but he used a stick that he had with some vigour.

Every patient who had a weapon, and most Afghans wear one of some kind, was disarmed before he entered the room. I had no interpreter, and had been advised by Mr. Pyne not to learn Persian; so that when the first patient was admitted I was in somewhat of a difficulty. I had seen in a Persian grammar that the word “Dard” meant pain, so that when the first man came up I said, “Dard?” putting a note of interrogation after it. The patient looked blankly at me. I thought he must be intellectually very dull, and I repeated my word, but with no better result. Not knowing quite what to say next, I examined him with the stethoscope.

He was greatly astonished, and shrank back somewhat suspiciously when I placed it against his chest. However, when he found no evil resulted, he allowed me to proceed. I could not find anything the matter with him, and was again at a standstill.

This seemed very unsatisfactory; when to my great relief, a tall young man, in a turban and a brown frock-shaped coat, stepped forward and addressed me in imperfect English. I found he was an Armenian Christian who had been educated in a Missionary boarding school in India, but he had been so long in Kabul that he had nearly forgotten English. He afterwards became my interpreter, and grew very fluent, but at first I had to learn his English before I could understand him; it was quite different from anybody else’s. However—about the patient—I said, “Ask this man if he has any pain.” And then I found that my word “Dard” ought to have been pronounced more like “Durrud.” I tried “Durrud” on them afterwards, but either they didn’t expect me to know Persian, or else there ought to have been some context to my word, for they looked just as blankly at me as when I said “Dard.” The ordinary Afghan is a very slow-witted person. I found the patient had no pain, and I said,

“Tell him to put out his tongue.”

The patient appeared surprised, and looked somewhat doubtfully at me. I suppose he thought I was jesting in making such a request. However, he put out his tongue: it was quite healthy. I said,

“There is nothing the matter with him;” but the Armenian said,

“Sir, a little you stop—I find out.” He said something in Persian, and the man nodded. What words the Armenian used to enable me to understand what was wrong I do not remember, but I found out eventually that the patient wanted a tonic, for all he suffered from was an inability to manage his many wives. I said, “Tell the man his complaint does not exist in my country; I have no medicines for it.”

There were, I should think, a dozen who came the first day for the same reason. Of other diseases, malarial fevers, eye cases, venereal diseases, coughs and dyspepsia were the commonest. I was not able to finish attending to all the patients in the morning, and returned in the afternoon, finding them still waiting. As the days went by, the number of patients increased to such an extent, that it finally became no small matter to attend to them all, and do my own dispensing. There were Hindustani dispensers, but I was not quite prepared to trust them, till I knew them better.

One day a lad, one of the Court pages, was brought: he was suffering from jaundice. I put the suitable medicine in a bottle, placed it on the table, then turned to examine another patient, mixed his medicine, and put the bottle by the side of the first one. I went on till I had about a dozen bottles ready, then I ordered them to be filled with water, and gave them out. The patients took their medicine and progressed satisfactorily: the Page boy, in particular, rapidly improved. I was naturally pleased and said so to the Armenian. I thought he looked rather strangely at me, and he said—

“Truly God works for the Sir!”

I wondered rather that he should be so impressive; but not for some months after did I know why he was so. Then he told me. It seemed that after I had mixed the Page boy’s medicine and turned away to the second patient, one of the dispensers seeing the bottle on the table ready, as he thought, for use and not quite clean, washed it out and replaced it. It was then filled with water and the boy rapidly became well. The dispenser had not dared to say what he had done, lest I should be angry. There was great wonder and awe at the hospital over that case, and my reputation as a healer of the sick spread rapidly.

“If the Feringhi,” they said, “gives a pinch of dust (jalap powder) or only water, the sick became well!”

In the Palace gardens outside the moat, and about a hundred yards from the out-patient hospital, I saw a large white building with pillared verandah and corrugated iron roof. This was the “Salaam Khana” or Hall of Audience. It is a long high hall, with twelve lofty windows on each side draped with English curtains: two rows of white pillars support the ceiling, which is decorated in colours with stencilled and lacquered plates of thin brass. The floor is covered with English carpets, and when, as is frequently the case, a dinner is given by His Highness to the chief officers of his army, long tables occupy the aisles, and each guest is accommodated with a cane-seated wooden arm-chair. During a banquet or festival, the hall is lit in the evening by two big “arc” electric lamps, the dynamo of which is worked by a portable engine, which is brought from the workshop for the occasion. The building lies east and west, and is entered at the eastern extremity by a big doorway and portico. The western extremity is entered through a large vestibule with portico and steps. Here the building is carried up another story, and this part of the Salaam Khana constitutes the AmÎr’s Guest house.

On the ground floor are the great hall, the vestibule or entrance hall which opens into the Palace gardens, and three smaller rooms. A stone staircase with wooden balustrades leads to the upper floor. Here there is in the centre a large pavilion, the Guest House, lighted by many large double windows, which open on to the covered balcony or terrace on the roof of the lower rooms. The AmÎr and, sometimes, Prince Habibullah, are accustomed to spend a month or two in this house, living in the upper pavilion, or in one of the lower rooms.

A few days after my first appearance at the dispensary, I heard there was a military “In-patient” hospital situated in the Sherpur cantonment, which lies to the north of the town about a mile and a-half away.

I determined to visit it, and one afternoon, after finishing at the City dispensary, we started along the Old Mall which leads from the town, past the Erg Palace to the cantonment.

We passed first the Salaam Khana, and then, further on, at the extremity of the Palace gardens, I saw a small monument about twenty feet high. It was square at the base and carried upward like the spire of a church. On the square pediment was an inscription in Persian. This monument I learnt was erected by His Highness to the memory of those soldiers who fell in the last war against the British.

On the other side of the Old Mall, commencing opposite the Palace and extending as far as the monument, is a row of one storied buildings. These open not on to the road, but on the other side into vegetable gardens and fields at the back. This row of buildings which turns a corner opposite the monument and extends down a road running east to the Kabul river, the AmÎr has built as a barrack for the soldiers of his body guard. About four feet from the doors of this row of buildings is a narrow stream of running water, artificially made and used, after the Afghan custom, both for ablutionary and for drinking purposes, as well as for the irrigation of the vegetable gardens.

Proceeding on our way we approached the lofty battlemented walls surrounding the Sherpur cantonment. This oblong enclosure which lies nearly east and west a mile and a-half due north of the city, is a mile and a-half along its front, nearly three-quarters of a mile along either end, and backs upon two low hills about three hundred feet high, the Bemaru heights, at the east base of which, within the enclosure, lies the Bemaru village. The hills protect the north side: the other three sides are protected by the high walls, which are complete except for half the length of the east extremity just by the Bemaru village.

It was this cantonment, it will be remembered, that was held by the British at the time when Lord Roberts occupied Kabul during the second Afghan war.

The Afghans had planned a sudden night attack in which their whole force was to move suddenly at a given signal upon the cantonment. As Lord Roberts’ force was exceedingly small, considering the great extent of the cantonment, it was thought by the Afghans that an easy victory would result. The signal was to be the sudden lighting of a beacon on the Asmai mountain. But there are never wanting those among the Afghans who, for a sufficient bribe, will reveal anything, and the British were ready when the attack came. The rush was met by a continuous and deadly fire, and after strenuous but vain efforts to gain an entry, the Afghans retired, leaving great numbers of their comrades dead on the field.

The gate we entered was protected outside by a semicircular curtain. Built along the inner side of the wall were buildings one story high, with a massive pillared colonnade or verandah and flat roof. There were wood-faced, clay-beaten steps at intervals leading to the roof, so that it was possible for troops defending the cantonment to take their stand on the roof and fire through the loopholes.

Just inside the gate was a bazaar of small shops, where fruit, vegetables, and bread were for sale; and soldiers in every style of dress, Turkoman, Kabuli, Hazara, were grouped about. Some were seated on the ground playing cards, some smoking the chillim or hubble-bubble, others digging in little vegetable or flower-gardens. These were created with great pains around irregularly arranged huts which formed the north side of the street leading along by the colonnade. These huts and the rooms under the colonnade were used as barracks. The soldiers seemed to stare with more curiosity than the townspeople had shown, and as we rode along towards the hospital one suddenly stepped forward and seized my bridle. I thought it was a piece of insolence, and raised my riding-whip to cut him across the face, when it occurred to me that perhaps it would be as well not to risk a close acquaintance with the ready knife of an incensed Afghan. My guard seized the man and hustled him out of the way with many loud words, to which he replied vigorously. Not understanding Persian, and an interpreter not being with me, I could not enquire what it was all about, so I rode on. All the centre of the cantonment was a huge open gravelled space, and here troops were drilling. The words of command were in Afghani or Pushtu, not Persian, but the titles of the officers were moulded upon English titles: Sergeant was pronounced Surgeon; Captain, Kiftan; General, Jinral; and there was Brigadier and Brigadier-Jinral.

The hospital was in an enclosed garden within the cantonment, and was entered by low but heavy double gates. A series of rooms was built along the inner side of the walls of the garden in the usual Afghan style. There was no connection between the rooms except by a verandah, and there was no upper story. Each room was about eight feet by ten, and as none of them had windows, but were lighted simply by the door that opened on to the verandah, they were nearly dark.

In the garden were a few trees, and in the centre a square sunk tank for water: this, however, was empty. There was a cook house or kitchen, with its coppers and ovens heated by charcoal, where the cook baked the bread and prepared the diets for the patients: Pilau (rice and meat), kabob (small squares of meat skewered on a stick and grilled over charcoal), shÔrbar, or broth, and shÔla, which is rice boiled and moistened with broth. There were two dispensaries, one containing native drugs and one a few European drugs. There were, of course, no female nurses: each sick soldier was looked after by a comrade.

The Hakim on his daily round wrote on a slip of paper the date and the name, diet and medicine of the patient he prescribed for. This was handed to the attendant of each patient, whose duty it was to procure the medicine from the dispensary and the food from the cook-house. I never heard of an attendant eating the food intended for a patient. One hakim, the cook and dispenser lived in the hospital. The slips of paper were taken to the mirza, or clerk, who copied the daily diets on to one paper and the medicines on another. The papers were then put away in the stores. No daily totals were taken, so that if fraud were suspected on the part of a storekeeper, dispenser, or cook, and the AmÎr ordered a rendering or auditing of accounts, the matter took a year, a year and a-half, or two years before it was completed. However, as I found later, the order in Afghanistan to “render an account” is usually synonymous with “fine, imprisonment, or death.”

The next morning at the out-patient hospital when the Armenian interpreter appeared, I told him of the soldier seizing my bridle in Sherpur, and asked him to enquire what the man wanted. He seemed rather startled when I told him, and at once turned to the sergeant of the guard to enquire about it. It was nothing after all, simply the man, guessing I was the Feringhi doctor, wanted me to see a sick comrade. They apologized for him, saying he was not a Kabuli but an uncouth “hillman” who knew no better. However, an order from Prince Habibullah arrived in the afternoon that I was not to attend at Sherpur till he had communicated with His Highness the AmÎr.