banks. For a third of the year the climate of Bagdad is delightful, another third it is a trifle too warm for comfort, but can be endured, and for the remaining third it is so hot that it could give points to the inside of a smelting furnace and then beat it. At this time the inhabitants take shelter in their cellars, and anybody who has a refrigerator to sleep in is considered fortunate. They bake their bread by putting the dough on a platter and setting it in the sun, and when they want to roast a turkey or a joint of mutton, they put it on the housetop for a quarter of an hour about noon. I haven’t the documents for all the above statements, but know a man who will prepare them if paid in advance.
There is a curious disease in this part of the world, and its ravages extend through the valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris, and as far west as Aleppo. In Bagdad it is called the date-mark, and further west is known as the Aleppo button.
It is a sore, obstinate and annoying, but painless, and appears on any part of the body just as a boil does in Christian countries, It stays twelve months, and then heals of its own accord, leaving a scar which stays for life. At first this scar is the color of a date, but it fades out in a few years, and resembles the rest of the skin.
Everybody must have it once, and only once; the disease is impartial, as it shows no distinction between natives and foreigners who have not taken out their papers of naturalization. The gentleman who is my authority says he knew an officer in the British army, in whom the date-mark made its appearance while he was travelling from Bagdad to India. It remained untouched, and then an English doctor attempted to cure it.
He cauterized it every day for four weeks, and at the end of that time the sore dried up and healed. Everything went on well for a month, and then the sore reappeared—not in the old spot, but in four other places, where it remained five months and then vanished.
