In Their Regular Visits
To Any Town, They Parade The Streets With Great Pomp And Gravity,
Followed By A Train
Of miserable objects, who pretend to have been
recently recovered from a long and dangerous illness by the
extraordinary skill
Of the doctor; while, in fact, their cadaverous
countenances and emaciated bodies seem to contradict their assertions,
and bear ample testimony that they are hurrying fast to that country,
"from whose bourne no traveller returns." Under the pretence of
charity, these poor wretches are supported by this Moorish
Aesculapius, while his views in so doing are entirely selfish; that
by their means he may better impose on the credulous, and obtain
considerable sums of money. When any one of them (by chance) effects
what he considers a great cure, it is communicated in a circular
letter to all the doctors in Barbary.
They select one of their elders every year, and appoint him to preside
over them. His business, for the time being, is to settle all their
controversies: he is the fountain of all justice among them; for as
they are looked upon to be petty saints, they are a privileged set of
men, and not in the least subject to either civil or military
jurisdiction. They possess the art of taming the monstrous serpents of
the country, and rendering them perfectly harmless: in short, their
profession is nothing but a system of the grossest empiricism.
Formerly the country could boast of having scientific astronomers;
for, like the ancient Egyptians, the inhabitants of Barbary cultivated
the science of astronomy with great success; but as it was
communicated from generation to generation by tradition only, it is
not surprising that the increasing indolence of the Moors should have
made them relinquish the more abstruse parts, and that now it is
dwindled into mere astrology.
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