344 DISEASES AMONG THE BEDOUIN ARABS. 
be made for generic or specific distinctions in the blood, the 
glandular apparatus, the general organisation or constitu- 
tional idiosyncrasies of the animals in question ? Have the 
manifestly imperfect observations hitherto made, in the 
urgency of more absorbing duties during so serious an 
epidemic, been so entirely negative as to justify a denial of 
any influence of the cholera agent upon animals at all; or is 
it possible that, with all their defects, they point to a future 
of clearer results ? Can this agent, so powerful against man, 
be wholly inoperative upon brutes ? If epidemic, would it 
not in some way occasionally assail them; if contagious, 
would it not sometimes overleap the difficulties of trans- 
ference, overcome resisting susceptibilities, and operate on 
those creatures which are most in proximity to man? 
Construing the literal facts, the scientific pathologist 
cannot positively assert that animals, even dogs, have yet 
been proved to be naturally subject to Asiatic cholera ; but, 
influenced by general considerations (which can never be 
altogether lost sight of), conjointly with our hitherto im- 
perfect data, we believe that it still remains an open question, 
pending the advent of a final solution, whether they are not, 
in proportion to their intimacy with man, occasionally sub- 
jected to the morbid influence of the special agent of that 
disease. 
{To be continued .) 
DISEASES AMONG THE BEDOUIN ARABS. 
Diseases are rare among them ; and the epidemics, which 
rage in the cities, seldom reach their tents. The cholera, 
which has of late visited Mosul and Bagdad with fearful 
severity, has not yet struck the Bedouins; and they have 
frequently escaped the plague when the settlements on the 
borders of the Desert have been nearly destroyed by it. 
The smallpox, however, occasionally makes great ravages 
among them, vaccination being still unknown to the Sham- 
mar; and intermittent fever prevails in the autumn, particu- 
larly when the tribes encamp near the marshes in Southern 
Mesopotamia. Rheumatism is not uncommon, and is treated, 
like most local complaints, with the actual cautery, a red-hot 
iron being applied to the part affected. Another cure for 
rheumatism consists in killing a sheep, and placing the 
patient in the hot reeking skin. Ophthalmia is common in 
the Desert, as well as in other parts of the East, and may 
