632 STATE OF MEDICINE AMONG THE ARABIANS. 
held, they are by no means calculated to inspire us with any 
more confidence than their co -religionaires possess. They have 
for assistants the Moorish and Jewish barbers, who are at 
once surgeons, dentists, and physicians, and whose chirur- 
gical art is reduced to three operations, bleeding, cupping, 
and cauterisation by fire, which they employ against every 
sort of pain. 
Beyond this, medical science amounts to nothing with 
either the one or the other, and we seek in vain for tradition 
of the works of Arienne, Rhazes, Albaiasi, and other eminent 
physicians, who have shone bright in the Arabian nation. 
Most of their ordinary remedies amount to nothing but the 
product of superstition and fanaticism, — such as charms, 
signs, secrets, invocation to this and that Saint, the water of 
such a fountain, &c., or else consist of ill-chosen, barbarous 
proceedings, for the most part fruitless, though always accom- 
panied by the sacramental in cha Allah! (God wills it!) This 
renders medicine of ready practice among the Arabs ; for if 
the sick recover, honour reflects on the doctor; though, if 
the patient dies, either God or his destiny — el Mactoub — 
willed it. 
The same tenets are maintained for veterinary medicine, 
with the simple difference that it is in a greater number of 
hands, of Mebibs at first, who add to their name for the pur- 
pose, Mebibs-it-avud (horse doctor), and afterwards proprietors 
themselves, who conform to their rule. Nevertheless we 
must state that the decisions of the Mebibs, however absurd 
they may be, always seemed of greater importance in the eyes 
of the natives, through a “ blind confidence which they can 
possess in such dignitaries. 5 ’ Ordinarily, these Mebibs succeed 
by assuming a religious zeal in attracting the veneration of 
the Arabs, and this sentiment becomes enhanced in credulity 
by them through the acquired persuasion that every one of 
the Mebibs is possessed of a secret which he has derived from 
Mahomet, which becomes transmitted down from father to 
son as a sacred legacy. 
According to the Arabs, all diseases are supposed to have 
preservatives, which consist either in prayers inclosed, like the 
genealogical hudje , within a little bag hung round the horse’s 
neck, small balls of earth, pieces of paper, and other charms of 
the kind, w'hich are said to protect from lightning, and from 
the ball of the enemy; or else a chapelet, a defence against 
a wild boar, the claws of a lion, and other sensible objects 
always on sale, with blessings by the marabouts, whose in- 
fluence in preventing the zidri or farcy, lamenesses, and dan- 
