344 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO I676. 



ber, is so unhealthy, that it breeds a very malignant fever, which, if it kill not, 

 leaves behind the jaundice for the rest of the patient's life. After the end of 

 March the wind changes, blowing mostly from the west or south-west, and is 

 sometimes so hot and suffocating, that it stops respiration : whence the Arabians 

 call it El-Samiel, that is, a wind of poison. And what seems very strange, if 

 one lay hold on an arm or a leg, or any other part of a body, that has been 

 newly stifled by this wind, it remains in the hand like grease, and as if the 

 body had been dead a month before. There is the same kind of air about 

 Mousset and Bagdat ; concerning which he relates, that travelling once on the 

 road from Ispahan to Bagdat, he would have been stifled, if he had not been in 

 the company of some Arabian merchants, who, as soon as they perceived the 

 wind coming, made him light from his beast, and throw himself as they did, 

 flat upon the ground on his belly, covering themselves well with their cloaks. 

 In which posture having remained for half an hour, and with much ado saved 

 themselves from being suffocated, they rose up, finding their horses wet all 

 over, and so faint that they were not able to carry their riders. But it is ob- 

 served, that upon any river, the same wind does no harm. Sometimes the 

 blast is so hot, that it burns as if lightning had passed. 



In Persia few children have the small-pox, but, instead thereof, most of them 

 are troubled with the scurf on the head, till they are 10 or 12 years old. — The 

 Persians know nothing of the gout or stone; only the Armenians, who drink 

 more wine than water, are aflflicted with the latter of those two diseases. — ^The 

 Persians, especially the better sort of them, are far less subject to sickness than 

 the Europeans, because they fail not in spring to take inwardly a decoction of 

 the wood of China, which they let boil for several days in water, according to 

 the dose prescribed by the physician. E. g. the first day they put one ounce of 

 it into three pints of water, increasing the dose of the root every day to the 

 12th, and thence to the 20th day. This drink is said to be very agreeable to 

 the taste, and of the colour of our pale wines. While they are drinking this 

 decoction, they must eat nothing but a little bread and a roasted chicken, with- 

 out salt; and after they have done drinking, they must forbear eating fruit a 

 whole month. When this drink is taken, the patient must be very well covered 

 to sweat; which is copious, and all his linen becomes yellow, and even the 

 walls of his chamber. This root soon spoils, and whilst it is good the author 

 says a pound of it costs 100 crowns. 



The women of the Turkish seraglio are always chewing mastic, to keep their 

 teeth clean and white. — ^When the Nogaies, a sort of Tartars, have received 

 any wound, they use no other ointment than boiled flesh, applied hot to the 

 wound. And when the wound is deep, they thrust in a piece of fat as hot as 



