523 



it is at present among the Arabians who inhabit the western side 

 of the Persian gulph, where this art is common. The way in which 

 they do it is only by the eyes and mouth, keeping the eyes fixed 

 steadily upon the person whose heart they design to eat, and pro- 

 nouncing certain diabolical words; b} r virtue of which, and by the 

 operation of the devil, the person, how hale and strong soever, falls 

 immediately into an unknown and incurable disease, which con- 

 sumes by little and little, and at last destroys him. This takes 

 place faster or slower as the heart is eaten, as they say ; for these 

 sorcerers can either eat the whole or a part only ; that is, can con- 

 sume it entirely and at once, or bit by bit, as they please. The 

 vulgar give it this name, because they believe that the devil, acting 

 upon the imagination of the witch when she mutters her wicked 

 words, represents to her the heart and entrails of the patient, taken 

 as it were out of his body, and makes her devour them." 



" The old woman who gave rise to these observations, at first 

 made some difficulty to confess her guilt; but seeing herself pressed 

 with threats of death, and being led, in fact, to the public square, 

 where I saw her with a sick young man whom she was accused of 

 havino- brought into his deplorable state, she said, that though 

 she had not been the cause of his complaint, perhaps she could 

 cure it, if they would let her remain alone with him, in his house, 

 without interruption ; by which she tacitly confessed her witch- 

 craft : for it is held certain in those countries, that these wicked 

 women can remove the malady which they have caused, if it be 

 not come to the last extremity. Of many remedies which they use 

 to restore health to the sufferers, there is one very extraordinary, 

 which is, that the sorceress casts something out of her mouth like 



