104 TRAVELS IX UPPEK 



the first envelope which is red, and they eat the 

 spungy and almost dry substance with which the 

 nut is covered. Although the Egyptians think, 

 this a very savoury fruit, I found it very insipid. 

 I cannot give it another resemblance than to bad 

 gingerbread, of which it has the dryness, and the 

 faint and disagreeable sweetness. I have eaten a 

 fruit in America the taste of which has a great 

 resemblance to this, and whicli is produced by the 

 courbarily a very large tree in the southern coun- 

 tries of the new continent *. The pithy substance 

 of the doian is also a medicine made use of in 

 Thebais. They infuse it in water with dates ; and 

 this draught, which is a cooling and gentle purge, 

 is of great service in tempering the ardour of a 

 fever and in curing it. 



I found again in the same place a disgusting and 

 horrible malady, of which I have seen negroes in 

 the French colony of Guiana, become the most 

 wretched victims : it is known there under the 

 denomination of the red disease. An Egyptian who 

 was attacked with it, presented himself to me 

 to be cured. He had lost the greater part of the 

 joints of his hands and his feet, which had fallen 

 off one after the other. The commencement of 

 this species of leprosy which the Arabs call mads- 

 jourdam, announces itself by the numbness, the red- 



* Himencea courbaril. Lin. 



ness 



