340 SOCIAL STATE OF THE ARABS. 



Koran expressly forbids the prying into futurity by 

 any form of divination, yet a Moslem seldom con- 

 cludes a bargain without consulting the stars. 



In a country where there are so few patients, it 

 cannot be expected that the healing art should be 

 much studied, or held in great esteem. The com- 

 mon practitioners know little more than the use of 

 simples, and the technical terms, such as they find 

 them in the books of Avicenna. Physicians are 

 obliged to act as chymists, apothecaries, surgeons, 

 farriers, and cattle-doctors ; and yet, with all this 

 variety of employments, they can scarcely earn a 

 livelihood. If the sick man die they get no reward ; 

 and this custom has taught them to use many petty 

 and disgraceful artifices to obtain payment before- 

 hand. There is not a single individual of this pro- 

 fession in the whole of Nejed. The natives cure 

 themselves, and their mode of treatment is suffi- 

 ciently rude. They heal sabre-wounds by applying 

 raw flesh taken from a camel newly killed. In 

 bowel-complaints they have recourse to senna. For 

 headache, colic, and sore eyes, the most approved 

 remedy is a red-hot iron. In cases of rheumatism the 

 patient is rubbed with warm oil or the fat of mut- 

 ton ; in dropsical complaints the water is drawn off 

 by means of setons in the back. Toothache is some- 

 times cured by inhaling the smoke of a certain 

 plant ; and the bite of venomous serpents by suck- 

 ing out the poison. Blood-letting is performed 

 with a common knife, and the lower classes some- 

 times scarify their legs, being of opinion that this has 

 a tendency to improve their strength. From the 

 same persuasion the inhabitants of Yemen anoint 

 their bodies with oil, which protects them from the 

 heat of the sun, and by closing the pores of the skin 

 is supposed to check the debilitating effects of too 

 copious perspiration. The Arabs have many family 

 nostrums, and are implicit believers in the efficacy 

 of charms and other mystic arts. No species of know- 



