POISON OF SCORPIONS 59 
He was indeed lucky to get well after so much scarifica- 
tion of the wounds and repeated doses of teriac, with 
which also his whole foot was plastered, besides being 
treated with many other medicines. 
Pagni also writes that the Berbers have the habit of 
carrying on their persons, or of affixing to the doors 
of their houses, a kind of bulletin made of a square piece 
of sheepskin on which are written certain Arabic names, 
together with seals and amulets. Such a superstitious 
preventive as those ridiculous bulletins coupled with an- 
other supposedly infallible remedy used by African physi- 
cians, i. e. giving water to drink, contained in fanciful 
cups of Unicorn horn, all this, I say, increased my doubt, 
but I did not dare to express it in view of such deeply 
rooted belief; still I resolved to persevere in the solution 
of the problem. Having prepared a live scorpion in such 
a way that he could not hurt me, and having thoroughly 
exasperated and irritated him, I forced him to sting the 
breast of a pigeon, several times, but, to the astonishment 
of many spectators, the bird showed no symptom of 
poisoning; the same can be said of a chicken and a puppy 
upon which I experimented. 
Here I can foresee the onslaught of an army of phi- 
losophers, physicians, and writers of natural history, who, 
holding up their arms in the sign of the cross to conjure 
the evil, call out to me scornfully that the scorpion does 
kill not only small animals, but will not let even the 
largest and fiercest alone. He attacks the lion, and, ac- 
cording to Dr. Kemal Eddin Muhammed Ben Musa Ed- 
demiri, he is not afraid of camel nor elephant. Others of 
these learned men tell me with an ironical smile, that it 
was no great wonder that the animals struck by my 
Tunisian scorpion did not die, since the scorpion had been 
