STATE OF MEDICINE AMONG THE ARABIANS* 633 
gerous wounds, are not less powerful, according to the Arabs, 
than is, for us, that of sulphate of quinine against fever. 
For a similar reason, they regard, as signs of fatality, such 
as are the veritable causes of disease, and which are furnished 
by the colour of the coat, the direction of this or that curl 
of hair, the presence of certain spots — for example : 
A horse having upon his forehead a white star mixed with 
red (chesnut or bay), or mixed hairs upon his nose, is destined 
to receive slight wounds as well as his rider. A white foot 
with black spots announces the same. Bay horses having 
neither white marks upon the forehead nor black hairs upon 
the back, will run a risk, among other mishaps, of being killed, 
&c. &c. 
The Arabs take care not to divulge these ominous signs to 
Europeans, for fear of the ill-favoured eye, with which all 
Oriental people regard with dread everything connected with 
foreigners, not only on account of their horses, but on their 
own and their family’s account. Neither do they neglect 
any means of turning aside from the person mounting, the 
fatality of their look ; so they fasten round the neck of the 
foal a cord of dromedary’s hair, to which are suspended bones 
of the dog, shells, and a little blue stone, or else they con- 
ceal the talisman underneath the mane or attach it to the 
tail. If they perceive that a stranger has particularly re- 
garded one of their horses, they do not permit him to approach 
before he has pronounced the in cha Allah! after the manner 
of exorcism; and if soon afterwards some disease sets in, 
they rest persuaded that the cause of it is owing to this per- 
nicious look ; when there remains no other resource to chase 
away the malign influence than to call in a sorcerer, who 
delivers the animal by a particular ceremony, consisting in 
breaking an egg upon the forehead of the sick animal and 
pronouncing certain magic formulae. The charm broken, the 
patient ought to recover; if not, God has forbid it. 
The art of diagnosis is, with the Arabs, little in advance 
of their etiological knowledge, since they never give them- 
selves the trouble of studying diseases in their progress, their 
symptoms, their general and destructive characters. They 
do not even know that the disease before them, and of which 
they can be assured of the existence, is characterised by an 
organic disorder easy of detection. They must, in fact, 
behold the disease, to believe in its presence; and it is in 
this case alone that they make use of remedies, which they 
know and adopt according to what they remember to have 
seen done to others, and always after the same manner, in 
the impossibility they experience in discriminating between 
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