Scrophula.
The scurvy is very uncommon in Egypt and Syria. In the former I saw no instance of it. In Dar-Fûr I have observed it in the gums, but never any general dissemination of scrophulous humour appearing in the blood. As the transpiration is seldom interrupted, and generally copious, it must doubtless carry off much of the acrid humours, and prevent their accretion. Salt provisions, which generate the scurvy in the North of Europe, are almost unknown; and much of the diet of the people consists of vegetables. All these circumstances have their influence, but none of them perhaps so much as the Nile-water, which is a perfect solvent; and by the change of its component parts during the increase, has a particular tendency to throw off impurities from the blood.
Syphilis.
The disease which attacks the principle of generation, and destroys, in its source, one among the few solaces with which human life is sparingly diversified, which the heroism and the philanthropy, or the ambition and the avarice, of Europeans have propagated wherever the malign destiny of other nations has ordained that their dominion should be established, does not appear in Egypt with all the terrors that mark its course in other countries.
The temperature, the air, the mode of living, perhaps simply the first, which maintains continued transpiration, render it much milder in its effects than with us, or even in the islands of the Archipelago.
The institutes of the Prophet, indeed, have tended to diminish promiscuous concubinage, yet there is no such deficiency as to impede the propagation of the disease, if it were as virulent as in other places.
Ulcers of long duration, noseless faces, and all the disgusting consequences of this malady are indeed occasionally visible. But they are in very small number, and notoriously the result of extreme negligence, and of repeated infection, where no means have been employed to exterminate it.
It may truly be esteemed fortunate that this disease prevails with no violence in Egypt, for its only certain remedy, mercury, is there found much less efficacious than in the more temperate latitudes. Administered even in smaller doses than in Europe, it is said ptyalism is either produced very early, or it passes off with the fæces, without any visible effect.
A Frank practitioner of Kahira, accustomed to the climate, ordered two drams of Mercury in thirty pills, with Gum Arabic and Syrup of Cichory, to be taken one a day. In this case, he declared, that the pills having been administered during the first seven days, and then, with the intermission of three days, two having been given each day for five days more, had produced no visible effect on the disease, but passed off by stool. In other cases he had known much smaller doses, in the space of two days, had caused inflammation of the salivary glands, and he was obliged to abandon the use of it, and have recourse to other means of cure.
The natives, who are unacquainted with the use of mercury, and indeed of minerals in general as employed internally, are yet provided, as they say, with efficacious remedies for the venereal disease. They use flax oil, fresh, as it is expressed, from the seed. A Greek, who was in the service of Murad Bey as a mariner, (galeongi,) and who was known to me in Kahira, had been infected, and on applying to a Frank physician, was told that it would be necessary immediately to use mercurials. The man was not inclined to confinement or to regimen, and went to a Copt at Jizé, who professed to relieve the sick. This man ordered him to take two coffee-cups of flax oil every morning fasting, and directed no regimen, but that of keeping himself warm. The Greek observed none, for he continued freely the use of aqua vitæ, and even sacrificed to Venus, (for persons who have been once infected and fully cured, are, it is said, in no fear of reinfection,) and was often in the heat of the sun. He had continued this method for two months, when a general eruption took place over his body, but chiefly about the head and glands of the throat. In this condition I saw him. His Esculapius ordered him to cover the pustules of his face with a kind of red earth, found in some parts of Egypt. They gradually became dry, and came off without leaving any mark. At the end of the third month from the time he had applied to the Copt, and one month after the appearance of the eruption, the man was in perfect health, and the skin had completely recovered its tone and polish.