GENERAL REMARKS ON THE DISEASES.
I have dwelt a considerable time on the two endemics, the plague and ophthalmia, the only diseases which we found peculiar to Egypt; and there do not many more diseases remain to detain us.
We come next to a class including several diseases, and which are usually described separately: but, I am at a loss how to disunite them, as they occur all of them in India, and as they have for the most part appeared in the Indian army in Egypt. The diseases are fever, hepatitis, and dysentery; and, as I have for the most part seen them, there exists among them a most intimate and natural connection. For a long time, the same causes appeared indifferently to produce them: there was a frequent transmutation of these diseases one into another, and in the three diseases we succeeded by a similar treatment. In offering a few remarks, however, I will preserve a distinction, and speak of these diseases separately. Before entering on them I may remark, that the effects of the solo-lunar influence, so remarkable in fever hepatitis and dysentery in India, were in Egypt likewise very observable. In the treatment of these diseases the practitioner found his account in attending to the periods of the moon; at the full and the change, paroxysms would frequently supervene, if not anticipated; and, at these periods, convalescents would frequently suffer a relapse.