1830Q Love, Law, and Physic in Barbary. 301 



The study of medicine is that which of all others is least cultivated 

 in Barbary, and yet this race of quacks and mountebanks would with 

 difficulty be brought to own their ignorance, or flinch from undertak- 

 ing the cure of the most complicated disease,, although unacquainted 

 with the simplest properties of drugs, much less their application to the 

 infirmities of the human frame. Happily a people living near to a state 

 of nature are less subject to maladies than those who partake of the luxu- 

 ries of life ; otherwise their ills would know little alleviation from the 

 skill of the physician. 



When any of the royal family of Morocco need medical advice, they 

 have a right (I believe, by treaty) of claiming the assistance of medical 

 men from Gibraltar.* In other parts of Barbary, there are some Euro- 

 pean practitioners, but an ugly custom of making the physician respon- 

 sible for the life of the patient, has deterred many from practising in 

 these dominions. Temptations have from time to time been held out, to 

 induce some of the profession to establish themselves at Morocco, but 

 no one has yet been bold enough to undertake the ungrateful and dan- 

 gerous office. 



The maladies most incidental to Barbary are cutaneous, the most 

 frightful of which is the elephantiasis, or swollen leg, supposed by some 

 to be caused by the waters of the country. So burthensome does the 

 afflicted limb become, and so augmented in weight by the inaction of a 

 night's sleep, that the wretched sufferer with difficulty rises from his bed. 

 No remedy is known for it, and all attempts at cure by amputation of 

 the limb have been attended with loss of life. 



The mode which a native empiric employed to rid his patients of this 

 complaint shews to what extent effrontery on the one side, and credulity 

 on the other, may reach. Being sent for, this sorcerer, for I can call 

 him nothing else, advised an unheard-of species of cauterization. Hav- 

 ing first obtained from the afflicted man a written discharge in case of 

 death (a very necessary document in this country), he applied a log of 

 burning wood to the diseased limb, by which he was sufficiently success- 

 ful to drive the evil to another part of the body. Encouraged by the 

 result, he made a similar experiment on a man of consequence, who died 

 from the effects of the operation. Having in his over-confidence neg- 

 lected in this case to demand a release, as before, the operator was 

 under the necessity of taking to his heels to avoid a tragic exit himself, 

 and may be now found in another part of Barbary practising a less dig- 

 nified calling than that of surgeon. 



Every stranger who visits Barbary is supposed to have a knowledge 

 of medicine ; they are all tibibs or doctors : I must plead guilty to 

 having favoured this deception with regard to myself, in order to gain 

 an introduction to the house of a Moor, which had nearly cost me 

 dearer than I expected. 



Sidi Hanar, a Moorish merchant of Tetuan, complained to me that 

 his favourite wife was afflicted with ophthalmia, a disease for which I 



* The exercise of this right has afforded us some very irreconcileable books of travels. 

 Dr. Lempriere states that when called on to visit the ladies of the harem, he was neither 

 allowed to look at them nor feel their pulses; but that holes were cut in the blankets 

 through which the ladies thrust their tongues for examination. A subsequent traveller, 

 Capt. Beauclerk, who accompanied Dr. Brown, so far from having met with any reserve 

 of this sort, seems to have conversed with every pretty face in the kingdom, and has 

 found no difficulty of the kind whatever, although travelling in a Mahommedan country. 



