Bilious remittent fevers were at this time prevalent in Hamah, and they seemed, in some instances, to be contagious. I was called in to the khodja of Nasýf pasha. The term khodja means an old and confidential servant of the house, who teaches the children their letters: out of a family, it implies a schoolmaster, or is an appellation given to an old respectable merchant or shopkeeper: whence I think is derived our word Codger. The pasha showed great anxiety about him. The mode of treatment they had adopted for him was simple and sensible, and he would have recovered without my interference.
My most troublesome patient was the lady of Selim Koblán, of whom mention has been made above. She had never borne any children, and was exceedingly anxious to be able to hold up her head among her acquaintance: for it is a source of much sorrow and shame both to man and wife in the East, but more especially to the woman, when the union is not productive of offspring.
On the 22d, whilst sitting with Muly Ismael in the saloon where he was accustomed to receive his visitors and despatch the business of the day, one of his soldiers, accused of frequenting women of the town, was brought before him, and, the case being heard, the Muly, in a summary way, ordered him to be bastinadoed. He was lifted from the ground by two or three of his comrades in the middle of the room where we were, held up horizontally, and three or four others with switches kept striking the soles of his feet as fast as they could, until the Muly told them to stop.[56] The man cried out very much, but seemed to obtain no commiseration. As soon as he was let down, Mahannah, the emir, who was there, rose from his seat, kissed Muly Ismäel’s hand, and thanked him for this public example made for repressing libertinism. Now the Muly, at this time, was notorious for his sensual indulgences. One of his people told me that he was rubbed in the bath, where he entered every day, by his women, whilst others of them danced before him in the state of nature. But this is the story that is told of every Turk who is known to be a sensualist: and generally signifies no more than what the narrator would do if he were in the same place.[57] Mahannah, although he confined himself to wives only, yet was pleased with a variety of them. In the night there was a thunder-storm.
It was a matter of wonder to me to observe how generally every kind of vegetable was eaten raw by the people of Syria. Cucumbers and carrots they pare and eat as we do apples: and, besides lettuce and cress, they would devour raw peas and beans almost as swine do. About this time died M. Guys, French consul at Tripoli. He left behind him a most valuable collection of Greek and Roman coins, which his residence in the Levant, for many years, had enabled him to collect.
On the summit of a mountain to the north of Hamah, distant about one league and a half, is the tomb of Shaykh Abd ed Dyn, a man held in veneration among the Moslems: and, on the 24th of April, there is annually a pilgrimage to his shrine. Observing that numbers of people flocked upon the road, I took my ride that way in the afternoon. No one would have said that the Turkish women were deprived of liberty, had he seen them on a holyday like this. From Hamah to the very top of the mountain, parties of women and girls were going and coming, and their volubility of tongue, and remarks to the men passing and repassing them, were the less repressed, because the faces of those uttering them could not be seen.
Spring had now clothed the country in all its verdure, and the occupations of the year might be said to be commencing. One of the most important, and which forms as great an epoch in the annals of a gentleman in the East, as the shooting season does among our gentry in England, is the sending their steeds to grass. Each man deprives himself one month out of the year of his game at giryd, and of his exercise on horseback, for the purpose of cleansing his animals: nor does he disdain to use means not much unlike these for purifying his own system. As soon as spring sets in, he loses blood from the arm by the lancet, or by cupping, from the leg or between the shoulders; with a view to prevent inflammatory diseases created by the effervescence of the blood in the first heats of the year. Such is the mode of reasoning prevalent among them, and, on a particular day, which is decided by the wane of the moon, twenty persons might be seen, on the benches at the doors of each barber’s shop, in different stages of phlebotomy. Cupping is performed by scarifying with a razor, and then applying over the cuts a horn, with a small hole at the narrow end, through which the air is abstracted by suction of the mouth, and is then plugged up. This has the same effect as rarefying the air by heat, and the blood flows copiously.
There was some alarm created in the house on the Saturday preceding, by the sudden and violent illness of M. Beaudin; who, having received from St. Jean d’Acre, where the plague was raging, a packet of letters, which he had handled and opened without the necessary precaution of fumigation, was supposed to have been infected: but the prevalence of fevers at Hamah better accounted for his indisposition. Yet he was possessed so strongly with the idea of having been infected by the pestiferous effluvia from his letters, that he was rendered very wretched in his mind. However, in a day or two, he found himself so much better as to recover his courage. The precautions which Franks and Christians use, when this malady reigns in the country, have been so often described, that I throw them rather into a note, than into the body of my narrative: and I would leave them out altogether, if I could do so consistent with the influence they have on the mode of living in the Levant.[58]
I pronounced the khodja out of danger on the 27th. He had constantly desired I should see him, but I never altered his treatment.
I received a visit from a Turk named Abd ed Dyn Aga, who had fought at the battle of Fuley, and been wounded in six places. He passed high encomiums on the bravery of the French.
Lady Hester, having now fulfilled the great object for which she had come to Hamah, namely, the journey to Palmyra, and having enjoyed sufficiently the scenery and novelties of the place and its environs, resolved to set off for Latakia, on the sea-coast. Previous to our departure, the horses were bled and new shod. We had no groom that could bleed a horse in the jugular vein, nor do the Turkish farriers bleed in that place; but, as Nasýf Pasha had expressed a wish to see it done, I undertook it, and he accordingly attended.