Bruises.
The bitumen found in the mummy pits is dissolved with butter by the Egyptians, and not only applied externally, but taken inwardly, in large doses, for bruises and wounds; it is said to have a surprising effect.
Petroleum.
Petroleum, which is brought from the western shore of the Arabian gulf, near to Suez, is taken inwardly as well as outwardly applied, and is much esteemed.
Bezoar.
The Orientals have still great confidence in the bezoar, or benzoar. For a small one they are, not unfrequently, contented to pay a sum equal to seven guineas. Even the European physicians administer it in some cases pulverised, as an alterative, and, as they say, with success.
Sal ammoniac.
Perhaps none of the drugs of Egypt is more extensively useful than sal ammoniac. That medicine seems, as it were, a specific, carefully provided, for the prevailing diseases of the country. Acting mildly, both as a carminative and diuretic, nothing is more effectual to remove the cephalalgia and lassitude often experienced during the great heat, which precedes the Nile’s augmentation, than a few drops of this spirit taken in water. Pulmonary complaints, occasioned by bad air, the suffocating heat of the southerly winds at certain seasons, and the ill effect of sudden transition from the burning heat of the sun to the chilling nocturnal dew, are often relieved by it. It might even be suggested, that as regular and continued transpiration seems very adverse to pestilential infection, a proper use of sp. sal. ammon. might not be wholly contemptible as an antidote to its infection.
Aphrodisiacs.
No part of the materia medica is so much in requisition as those which stimulate to animal pleasure. The lacerta scincus, in powder, and a thousand other articles of the same kind, are in continual demand. For this chiefly fields are sown with hashîsh, the bang of the East Indies. It is used in a variety of forms, but in none, it is supposed, more efficaciously than what is in Arabic called Maijûn, a kind of electuary, in which both men and women indulge to excess. The impotence of age, and the languor of satiety or disease, ponder in vain the oracles of the descendant of Ismaîl, for the invigorating influence of the benign deity of Canopus.