218 



beggars, by singing, both get relief, and comfort their 

 poverty ; playing withall upon drums which are fashioned 

 like sives." 



The ancient salubrity of Egypt has been attributed, by 

 a recent writer, in a great degree, to the general pros- 

 perity of the people, the canals of Sesostris, and the 

 elevation of the dwellings or mounds, but above all to 

 the universal practise of embalmment. And it has been 

 asserted that this salubrity ceased with the practice of 

 embalmment, which was totally abolished about the 

 middle of the fourth century, (356 A.D.) It is con- 

 tended by the same writer, that in Lower Egypt, dis- 

 ease, more especially the plague, is sown and preserved by 

 the mode of sepulture — that " the living are poisoned 

 by the emanations from the dead." " A porous level soil, 

 filled Avith dead bodies, penetrated universally by moisture 

 during the overflowing of the Nile, is after the subsidence 

 of the waters, heated by a burning sun, and a vast ceme- 

 tery, in the language of M. Pariset, is converted into a 

 true distillery of dead bodies." Doubtless this may be 

 a prolific source of disease, and more particularly of the 

 plague ; but far more may be attributed to the great 

 moral and physical degradation of the people, to their 

 insufficient and unwholesome food, to their low, ill-ven- 

 tilated, over-crowded wretched huts, and the agency of 

 animal and vegetable matters, putrefying in an alluvial or 

 marshy soil, like that of the Delta. Moral, physical, and 

 political degradation, poverty, famine, and filth, must 

 always, and everywhere, render tlieir possessors fitting 

 subjects for disease and death. Whatever may be the 

 case now in Lower and Middle Egypt, it is evident from 

 the concurrent testimony of authors, that for a period of 

 nearly a thousand years, Egypt was free from all pesti- 

 lential epidemics — that is, during its occupation by the 

 Persians (194 years), that by x\lexander and his sue- 



