SOCIAL STATE OF THE ARABS. 359 



requires some practice to enable a stranger to keep 

 pace with the company and yet avoid burning 

 the fingers. They have only two meals, breakfast 

 in the morning, and dinner or supper at sunset. 

 They wash their hands just before eating, but sel- 

 dom after ; merely licking the grease off their fin- 

 gers, rubbing them on the scabbards of their swords 

 or a corner of the tent-covering. Among the better 

 classes table-napkins are used, or a long linen cloth 

 which is spread under their knees. The women 

 and slaves eat what is left by the men ; and it is 

 seldom they have the good fortune to taste any thing 

 but the fragments and refuse of the table. It is 

 accounted a mark of respect towards superiors not 

 to eat out of the same dish. 



From their regular and temperate life the Arabs 

 are subject to few diseases. Leprosy seems always 

 to have been an endemic in that country. Of the 

 three varieties, two are reckoned more disgusting 

 than dangerous ; but the third is infectious, and very 

 malignant. The ravages of the smallpox have long 

 been arrested by artificial means ; as the practice of 

 inoculation has been in use among the Bedouins 

 from time immemorial. Mothers perform this opera- 

 tion on their children, by opening the skin of the 

 arm with the prickle of a thorn or the point of a 

 needle charged with infected matter. There are 

 many tribes, however, where this art is unknown, 

 and in consequence whole encampments have fallen 

 victims to this unsparing malady. Vaccination has 

 been lately introduced, and met with a favourable 

 reception. Attacks of the Guinea- worm (the Vena 

 Medinensis) are common in Yemen ; and supposed 

 to originate from the use of putrid waters in 

 which the eggs of the insect have been deposited. 



