AND LOWER EGYPT. IO7 



and impetuous pleasures in the face of day, along 

 the road side which conducted to the city, and 

 near which they had their dwellings. The leprosy 

 which consumed them, is the leprosy properly so 

 called, which the Greeks denominate lefra, the 

 same kind with which the Jews were infected, and 

 which was very common and at the same time 

 contagious among them. This was also, accord- 

 ing to Galen, an epidemical distemper at Alex- 

 andria, 



Curious to know if the sick man of Tahfa, 

 although attacked with a leprosy of a different na- 

 ture, felt the same voluptuous transports with the 

 lepers of the isle of Candia, and of several other 

 countries in Turkey, 1 put some particular ques- 

 tions to him. He recounted to me with the ut- 

 most simplicity, the most secret particulars of his 

 domestic economy. His advanced age had not in 

 the least decree weakened his coi.stitution. Burn- 

 ing with continual desires, there was not a day 

 passed in which his wife did not feel more than one 

 effect from it. Even whilst he was spcakir g to me 

 on the subject, his countenance assumed an ex- 

 pression, his eyes brightened in such a manner, as 

 to leave me no doubts respecting what he had said 

 to me. But, and this is an important observation, 

 his wife, notwithstanding an habitual and intimate 

 communication, did not experience one symptom 



of 



