[p.389]peaches, grapes, and pomegranates.  The popular treatment is by the actual cautery; the scientific affect the use of drastics and astringent simples, and the Bizr al-Kutn (cotton-seed), toasted, pounded, and drunk in warm water.  Almost every one here, as in Egypt, suffers more or less from haemorrhoids; they are treated by dietetics-eggs and leeks-and by a variety of drugs, Myrobalans, Lisan-al-Hamal (Arnoglossum), etc.  But the patient looks with horror at the scissors and the knife, so that they seldom succeed in obtaining a radical cure.  The Filaria Medinensis, locally called “Farantit,” is no longer common at the place which gave it its European name.  At Yambu’, however, the people suffer much from the Vena appearing in the legs.  The complaint is treated here as in India and in Abyssinia:  when the tumour bursts, and the worm shows, it is extracted by being gradually wound round a splinter of wood.  Hydrophobia is rare, and the people have many superstitions about it.  They suppose that a bit of meat falls from the sky, and that a dog eating it becomes mad.  I was assured by respectable persons, that when a man is bitten, they shut him up with food, in a solitary chamber, for four days, and that if at the end of that time he still howls like a dog, they expel the Ghul (demon) from him, by pouring over him boiling water mixed with ashes-a certain cure I can easily believe.  The only description of leprosy known in Al-Hijaz is that called “Al-Baras”:  it appears in white patches on the skin, seldom attacks any but the poorer classes, and is considered incurable.  Wounds are treated by Marham, or ointments, especially by the “Balesan,” or Balm of Meccah; a cloth is tied round the limb, and

[p.390]not removed till the wound heals, which amongst this people of simple life, generally takes place by first intention.  Ulcers are common in Al-Hijaz, as indeed all over Arabia.  We read of them in ancient times.  In A.D. 504, the poet and warrior, Amr al-Kays, died of this dreadful disease, and it is related that when Mohammed Abu Si Mohammed, in A.H. 132, conquered Al-Yaman with an army from Al-Hijaz, he found the people suffering from sloughing and mortifying sores, so terrible to look upon that he ordered the sufferers to be burnt alive.  Fortunately for the patients, the conqueror died suddenly before his inhuman mandate was executed.  These sores here, as in Al-Yaman,[FN#19] are worst when upon the shin bones; they eat deep into the leg, and the patient dies of fever and gangrene.  They are treated on first appearance by the actual cautery, and, when practicable, by cutting off the joint; the drugs popularly applied are Tutiya (tutty) and verdigris.  There is no cure but rest, a generous diet, and change of air.