86 History of Animal Plagues. 



the word ahahil, Major Price having translated it as the plural of 

 al'llak, a vesicle; but Burton thinks the former is an Arabic and 

 the latter a Persian word, and that they have no connection what- 

 ever. M. C. de Perceval, quoting the ' Sirat el Rasul/ which 

 savs that at that time small-pox first appeared in Arabia, ascribes 

 the destruction of the host of Yemen to an epidemic and a 

 violent tempest. The strangest part of the story is, that al- 

 thou(!;h it occurred at Meccah, about two months before Maho- 

 met's birth, and therefore within the memory of many living at 

 the time, the prophet alludes to it in the Koran as a miracle. 

 The same intrepid traveller. Burton, in another work on Africa, 

 remarks: ' The most dangerous disease is small-pox, which history 

 traces to Eastern Abyssinia, where it still becomes at times a vio- 

 lent epidemic, sweeping off its thousands.''^ And elsewhere, in 

 speaking of the diseases of East Africa, he seems to think the 

 small-pox a native of that country. 'The most dangerous epi- 

 demic is its abor'igen, the small-pox, which propagated without 

 contact or fomites, sweeps at times like a storm of death over the 

 land.^ 2 



Niebuhr^ informs us that a rude form of inoculation — the 

 mother pricking the child's arm with a thorn — has been known 

 in Yemen from time immemorial. Forbes thought small-pox in 

 man had been known in Ceylon since the 3rd century. When 

 mentioning vaccination in that island, he expresses a hope that 

 it will ' prevent any very extensive ravages from a cause which 

 has formerly contributed materially to the depopulation of the 

 island, and is probably the Red-eyed Demon of pestilence who 

 is recorded to have swept the country of half its numbers in the 

 3rd century, and in the reign of Sirisangabo.' * It may at this 

 primitive period have been introduced from Africa. 



With re2;ard to variola ovina, it is curious to find that its 

 supposed earliest invasion of this country as an epizooty, and 

 its presence here and elsewhere since the 13th century, should 

 be in connection with the importation or introduction of Merino 



' First Footsteps in East Africa, p. 180. 



^ The Lake Regions of Central Africa, vol. ii. p. 318. 



^ Beschriebung von Arabien, 1772. 



^ Eleven Years in Ceylon, vol. i. p. 357. 



