The Disease Seemed, However, To Be Of The
Most Malignant Kind; Very Few Of Those Who Were Attacked, Escaped, And
The Same Was Observed At Djidda.
The Arabs used no kind of medicine; I
heard of a few people having been bled, and of others having been cured
by applying a drawing-plaster to the neck; but these were rare
instances, which were not imitated by the great mass.
As it is the
custom to bury the dead in a very few hours after decease, two instances
occurred during my stay at Yembo, of persons supposed dead being buried
alive: the stupor into which they fell when the disorder was at a
crisis, had been mistaken for death. One of them gave signs of life at
the moment they were depositing him in the grave, and was saved: the
body of the other, when his tomb was re-opened several days after his
burial, to admit the corpse of a near relation, was found with bloody
hands and face, and the winding-sheet torn, by the unavailing
[p.414] efforts he had made to rise. On seeing this, the people said,
that the devil, being unable to hurt his soul, had thus disfigured his
body.
The governor of Yembo took great care that the exact amount of the
mortality in the town should not be known; but the solemn exclamations
of "La illaha ill' Allah," which indicate a Moslim funeral, struck the
ear from every side and quarter of the town, and I counted myself forty-
two in one day. To the poor the plague becomes a real feast; every
family that can afford it, kills a sheep on the death of any of its
members, and the day after, the men and women of the whole neighbourhood
are entertained at the house. The women enter the apartments, embrace
and console all the females of the family, and expose themselves every
moment to infection. It is to this custom, more than any other cause,
that the rapid dissemination of the plague in Mohammedan towns must be
ascribed; for when the disease once breaks out in a family, it never
fails of being transmitted to the whole neighbourhood.
It is a common belief among Europeans, and even eastern Christians, that
the Mohammedan religion forbids any precautionary measures against the
plague; but this is erroneous. That religion forbids its followers from
avoiding the disease if it has once entered a town or country; but it
warns them at the same time, not to enter any place where the plague
rages: and it accordingly forbids individuals to shut themselves up in a
house, and to cut off all communication with the rest of the infected
town, because this is the same as flying from the plague; but it favours
measures of quarantine, to prevent the importation of the disease, or
its communication to strangers upon their arrival. The belief in
predestination, however, is so deeply and universally rooted in the
minds of the eastern nations, that not the slightest measures of safety
are any where adopted. The numberless extraordinary instances of the
disease sparing those who have come into closest contact with it,
confirm them in their opinion that it is not epidemic; and their prophet
Mohammed has declared to them, "that the plague is caused by the demon's
hostile attack upon mankind," and that "those who die of it are
martyrs." The universal opinion
[p.415] prevails among Moslims, that an invisible angel of death, armed
with a lance, touches the victims he destines for the plague, whom he
finds out in the most hidden recesses. The trunk of a palm-tree lay in
one of the streets of Yembo, and it had been observed that many people
who had stepped over it, had soon after been seized with the plague; it
was therefore believed that the demon had there taken his favourite
stand, to wound the passer-by; and therefore the Arabs took a circuitous
road, to avoid their foe, although they were persuaded that he was
light-footed and could overtake them wherever they went.
That the Christians and Franks escape the disease by shutting themselves
up in their houses, affords but a feeble proof to the contrary.
Imprudence, and the tardy adoption of these measures, always cause a
slight mortality even among them; and such cases are afterwards adduced
in proof of the folly of attempting to oppose the decrees of Providence.
Besides, there are many Christians in the East, who follow Turkish
maxims, and, impressed with the same notions of predestination, think it
superfluous to take any steps for their safety. Turks trifle with so
many of the prescribed duties of their religion, that it might not,
perhaps, be difficult, in this instance, to make them adopt rational
opinions; and the more so, as the Koran is silent upon this head: but no
private measures can be adopted, and rigidly observed, as long as every
individual, almost, is convinced in his own mind of their folly and
inefficacy. If this were not universally the case, the Turks themselves
would, long ago, have found means of resorting to prophylactics, in
spite of their religious doctrines; as the Arabs now did in the Hedjaz;
and their olemas would have furnished them with fetwas, and quotations
from the law, in favour of what their good sense might have led them to
adopt. In the Hadyth, or sacred traditions, a saying of Mohammed is
recorded: "Fly from the leprous, as thou flyest from the lion."
The case is different, respecting the means of preventing the plague
from being imported, or to establish regular quarantines. This is a
measure depending entirely upon the government. The most fanatic and
orthodox Muselmans, those of the Barbary states, have adopted this
system; and the laws of quarantine are as strictly enforced in their
[p.416] harbours, as they are in the European ports on the northern
shores of the Mediterranean. That a similar system has not been
introduced into Turkey is matter of deep concern, and may be attributed
rather to motives of interest, than to bigotry.
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