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ameliorating their own sufferings or increasing their chance of recovery, which, indeed, in such cases, was hopeless. On the other hand, to leave them behind was abandoning them to the cruelty of the Turks, who always made it a rule to murder their prisoners with protracted torture. In this emergency, I submitted to Desgenettes the propriety of ending the misery of these victims by a dose of opium. I would have desired such a relief for myself under the same circumstances. I considered it would be an act of mercy to anticipate their fate by only a few hours, ensuring them an end free from pain, and oblivions of the horrors which surrounded and threatened them, rather than a death of dreadful torture. My physician did not enter into my views of the case, and disapproved of the proposal, saying, that his profession was to cure, not to kill. Accordingly I left a rear-guard to protect these unhappy men from the advancing