From The
Middle Of October To May The Climate Is Most Agreeable, But The Five
Intervening Months Should Be Passed At Higher Altitudes, Which, As I
Have Already Described, Afford A Variety Of Climates.
Neither Lady Baker nor myself or servants had any climatic ailment
throughout our journeys in every portion of the island.
A horsekeeper
had fever while at Famagousta, but he was a native who had suffered
previously, and the fit was a return of chronic ague; my own people
never required a dose of medicine although we were living in tents
through winter and summer.
The water is generally wholesome, therefore dysentery and bowel
complaints are rare; CONSUMPTION IS UNKNOWN; and pulmonary affections
are uncommon. Fevers, including those of a typhoid character, and ague
from malaria, are the usual types; outbreaks of small-pox have been
reduced by general vaccination. The improvement in sanitary regulations
will no doubt diminish the occurrence of typhoid fevers, which even now
are rare considering the filth of the villages and the generally dirty
habits of the population.
Hydrophobia among dogs is very rare, and distemper among puppies is
unknown. Pigs are the general scavengers in the Cypriote villages, and
the flesh of these filthy feeders is much esteemed by the Christian
inhabitants during the winter months. In the monasteries, which, from
their great altitude among the mountains, are occasionally snowed up and
excluded from communication, a winter supply of stores is laid up during
the autumn. The pigs and the fattest goats are killed, and salted in a
most peculiar manner. Without removing a bone, the animal is split from
the neck along the abdomen throughout, and it is laid completely open
like a smoked haddock. Every joint is most carefully dislocated, even to
the shoulder-blade bones, and remains in its place. The flesh is neatly
detached from every bone, and in this form the carcase is salted, and
stretched out in the sun to dry. When prepared it resembles a shield, as
it remains perfectly flat, the back presenting a smooth surface, while
the inside represents a beautiful specimen of comparative anatomy, every
joint dislocated, but secured by the original integument to the socket,
and every bone cleanly detached, but undisturbed from its original
position. The dried body looks like a surgical preparation carefully
arranged for an explanatory lecture.
The common and low quality of food of the lower classes, and especially
of the agricultural population, must induce a want of stamina which is
unable to resist the fever in malarious districts, and this results in
chronic disease of the spleen. I have already described the general
protuberance of the abdomen among the children throughout the Messaria
and the Carpas districts, all of whom are more or less affected by
splenetic diseases. On the mountains a marked difference is observed, as
throughout the numerous villages at high altitudes the children are as
healthy as those of England, although poorly clad in the home-made
cotton-stuffs of the country.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 243 of 274
Words from 126611 to 127110
of 143016