AND LOWER EGYPT. ail 



slight retchings. I have sometimes administered, 

 with fear and trembUng, very powerful medicines, 

 which made no more impression on my patients 

 than if they had drank a glass of water. The 

 monks for the propagation of the faith, who 

 maintained themselves in those countries by the 

 practice of physic, successfully made use of a 

 purge for the natives, which they might have ad- 

 ministered with as much propriety to horses, and 

 which they compounded of aloes, the coloquin- 

 tida, and a quantity of gum. Of these they 

 formed pills, and a drachm was a dose. 



The leaves of the senna, a plant indigenous in 

 the southern extremity of Egypt, are there taken 

 in large quantities without inconvenience, and 

 almost without effect. Perhaps fresh senna has 

 not the same purgative virtues as it has when 

 dried ; like the manna, which is used as a substi- 

 tute for sugar in victuals and pastry at Kurdisfan, 

 Diarhekir, Ispahan, and other countries of Asia, 

 and of which the inhabitants consume a great 

 deal without being purged *. 



I have already said, that diseases which attack 

 even the sources of generation were very common 

 in Egypt. They have found their way to the most 

 remote corners of it. The monks cured them 



* See a Description of Arabia by Niebuhr, p. 129. 



p 2 very 



