If Not Cured Within A
Certain Time, These Fevers Often Occasion Hard Swellings In The Stomach
And Legs, Which Are Not Removed Without Great Difficulty.
The Medinans
care little about this intermittent fever, to which they are accustomed,
and with them it seldom proves fatal; but the case is otherwise with
strangers.
In some seasons it assumes an epidemic character, when as
many as eighty persons are known to have died in one week; instances of
this kind, however, seldom happen.
Dysenteries are said to be rare here. Bilious complaints, and jaundice,
are very common. There appears to be in general a much greater mortality
here than in any other part of the East that I have visited. My lodgings
were very near to one of the principal gates of the mosque, through
which the corpses were carried when prayers were to be said over them;
and I could hear, from my sick bed, the exclamations of "La illah il
Allah," with which that ceremony was accompanied. During my three
months' confinement one funeral at least, and often two, passed every
day under my window. If we reckon on the average three bodies per day
carried into the mosque through this gate, as well as the others,
besides the poor Arabs who die in the suburbs, and over whose bodies
prayers are said in the mosque situated in the Monakh, we shall have
about twelve hundred deaths annually, in this small town, the whole
population of which, I believe
[p.400] to be at most from sixteen to twenty thousand; a mortality which
cannot be repaired by births, and would long ago have depopulated the
place, did not the arrival of foreigners continually supply the loss. Of
this population I reckon about ten or twelve thousand for the town
itself, and the rest for the suburbs.
[p.401] JOURNEY FROM MEDINA TO YEMBO.
April 21st. 1815. OUR small caravan assembled in the afternoon near the
outer gate of the town, and at five o'clock P.M. we passed through the
same gate by which I entered, on my arrival, three months ago. Then I
was in full health and spirits, and indulging the fond hopes of
exploring unknown and interesting parts of the Desert on my return to
Egypt; but now, worn down by lingering disease, dejected, and
desponding, with no more anxious wish than to reach a friendly and
salubrious spot, where I might regain my health. The ground leading to
the town on this side is rocky. About three quarters of an hour distant,
the road has a steep short descent, hemmed in by rocks, and is paved, to
facilitate the passage of caravans. Our direction was S.W. by S. In one
hour we came to the bed of a torrent called Wady el Akyk, which during
the late rains had received so copious a supply from the neighbouring
mountains, that it had become like a deep and broad river, which our
camels could not attempt to pass.
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