230 
TEHERAN. 
Galen : they attribute all sickness to one of two causes, heat or cold. 
If the patient is supposed to suffer from much heat, they bleed 
him beyond measure; if from cold, they give him cathartics in the 
same proportion. 
In the belief of Persia there is another and a simpler remedy for 
malady. Nor perhaps is the credulity confined to Persia: there is I 
suspect a more general superstition, that to relieve disease or accident, 
the patient has only to deposit a rag on certain bushes, and from the 
same spot to take another which has been previously left from the same 
motive by a former sufferer. 
In the time of the Seffis there was also another superstition in 
Persia, which perhaps is not wholly extinct at this day. Every one 
who has read Chardin, will remember the history of the coronation 
of Shah Suleyman, who, because his original name was considered 
unlucky, was renamed and recrowned. 
The fruits which were in season at Teheran in the month of March, 
and which were served to us every day at dinner, were pomegranates, 
apples, pears, melons, limes, and oranges. The pomegranates came 
from Mazanderan , and were really here a luscious fruit, much superior 
to any that I have seen in Turkey. They were generally twelve inches 
in circumference. The vegetables were carrots, turnips, spinach and 
beet-root. Hives are kept all over the country, and we had at Teheran 
the finest honey that I ever ate, though that of Shiraz is reckoned bet¬ 
ter, and that of Kauzeroon (which the bees cull from the orange-groves) 
is considered as still superior. Our mutton was excellent, and very 
cheap; for a sheep costs two piastres only. The beef was sometimes 
good; but as their meat is not deemed desirable in Persia, oxen are 
not kept or fattened for the purposes of the table. We eat a hare 
which had been caught by a man in the plain, and which we afterwards 
coursed with our greyhounds. The Persians regard this flesh as unclean 
in opposition to the Turks, who eat it without scruple. 
In April we got delicious herrings from the Caspian, which appears 
the proper sea for them. They are much larger than those which we 
