A popular remedy for illness of any kind is to obtain from the imam, or priest, a written text of the Koran and swallow it, and I have known of doctors' prescriptions being taken the same way, and doubtless with similar effect.
Another superstition is that, if a person has had a fall, water poured on the spot will prevent its repetition.
A curious method for arresting the spread of infectious disease is to surround the patient with a circle of some disinfectant, and during a cholera scare I saw it applied to a man on the Galata bridge who had an apoplectic stroke. The case was considered suspicious, and his body was removed, but a circle of whitewash, like the markings of a tennis-court, was drawn round the place where he had fallen, and the infection thus imprisoned!
Scraps of paper thrown in the street are held in reverence and removed by pious Moslems, because the Name of God may be written on them and profaned if trodden upon; but another version is that all scraps not thus collected by the Moslem will be scattered over the burning soil through which he is to pass, after death, on the way to Paradise, and will make his passage more painful.
CHAPTER VIII
SYRIANS, DRUSES, MARONITES, AND BEDOUINS
An account of Palestine having been given in "Peeps at the Holy Land," I will not allude specially to it, although it belongs to Turkey. Arabic is the language also spoken in Syria, which lies north of Palestine, and in Mesopotamia, which is to the east.
Of the ancient towns of Tyre and Sidon, once famous as the capitals of Phœnicia, nothing now remains but ruins on which fishermen dry their nets. The inhabitants in the surrounding regions, however, still keep up many of their ancient customs and superstitions, and, in a modified way, Baal and Astarte are still worshipped.