[50] "Milk-Seller."

[51] For instance, Anfarr, the "Spotted;" Tarren, "Wheat-flour;" &c. &c.

[52] It is used by the northern people, the Abyssinians, Gallas, Adail, Eesa and Gudabirsi; the southern Somal ignore it.

[53] The most dangerous disease is small-pox, which history traces to Eastern Abyssinia, where it still becomes at times a violent epidemic, sweeping off its thousands. The patient, if a man of note, is placed upon the sand, and fed with rice or millet bread till he recovers or dies. The chicken-pox kills many infants; they are treated by bathing in the fresh blood of a sheep, covered with the skin, and exposed to the sun. Smoke and glare, dirt and flies, cold winds and naked extremities, cause ophthalmia, especially in the hills; this disease rarely blinds any save the citizens, and no remedy is known. Dysentery is cured by rice and sour milk, patients also drink clarified cows' butter; and in bad cases the stomach is cauterized, fire and disease, according to the Somal, never coexisting. Haemorroids, when dry, are reduced by a stick used as a bougie and allowed to remain in loco all night. Sometimes the part affected is cupped with a horn and knife, or a leech performs excision. The diet is camels' or goats' flesh and milk; clarified butter and Bussorab dates--rice and mutton are carefully avoided. For a certain local disease, they use senna or colocynth, anoint the body with sulphur boiled in ghee, and expose it to the sun, or they leave the patient all night in the dew;--abstinence and perspiration generally effect a cure.

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