There Are Heavy Dews Also By Night, During That Month And In October; Thick Fogs Appeared On The Coast, In The Evening And Morning. During The Summer Months, The Wind Blows Generally Between East And South, Seldom Veering To The West, But Sometimes To The North.

In September, the regular northerly winds set in, and continue during the whole winter.

In the Hedjaz, as on the sea-coast of Egypt, the north- east wind is more damp than any other; and during its prevalence, the stone pavement in the interior of the houses always appeared as if covered with moisture.

The diseases prevalent in both towns are much the same; and the coast of the Hedjaz is perhaps among the most unhealthy countries of the East. Intermittent fevers are extremely common, as are likewise dysenteries, which usually terminate in swellings of the abdomen, and often prove fatal. Few persons pass a whole year without a slight attack of these disorders; and no stranger settles at Mekka or Djidda, without being obliged to submit, during the first months of his residence, to one of these distempers; a fact, of which ample proof was afforded in the Turkish army, under Mohammed Aly Pacha. Inflammatory fevers are less frequent at Djidda than at Mekka; but the former place is often visited with a putrid fever, which, as the inhabitants told me, sometimes appeared to be contagious; fifty persons having been known to die of it in one day. Asamy and Fasy mention frequent epidemical diseases at Mekka: in A.H. 671, a pestilence broke out, which carried off fifty persons a day; and in 749, 793, and 829, others also infected the town: in the latter year two thousand persons died. These authors, however, never mention the plague; nor had it made its appearance in the Hedjaz within the memory of the oldest inhabitants; whence a belief was entertained, that the Almighty protected this holy province from its ravages; but, in the spring of 1815, it broke out with great violence, as I shall mention in another place, and Mekka and Djidda lost, perhaps, one-sixth of their population.

Ophthalmia is very little known in the Hedjaz. I saw a single

[p.242] instance of leprosy, in a Bedouin at Tayf. The elephantiasis and Guinea-worm are not uncommon, especially the former, of which I have seen many frightful cases. It is said that stone in the bladder is frequent at Mekka, caused, perhaps, by the peculiar quality of the water; to the badness of which many other diseases also may be ascribed in this hot country, where such quantities of it are daily drunk. I heard that the only surgeons who knew how to perform the operation of extracting the stone from the bladder, are Bedouins of the tribe of Beni Sad, who live in the mountains, about thirty miles south of Tayf. In time of peace, some of them repair annually to Mekka, to perform this operation, the knowledge of which they consider as a secret hereditary in some families of their tribe.

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