The Antiquity Of The Word And Its Origin Are Still Disputed. [FN#12] Burckhardt (Travels In Arabia, Vol.

Ii.) informs us, that in A.D. 1815, when Meccah, Yambu', and Jeddah suffered severely from the plague, Al-

Madinah and the open country between the two seaports escaped. [FN#13] Conjecture, however, goes a little too far when it discovers small-pox in the Tayr Ababil, the "swallow birds," which, according to the Koran, destroyed the host of Abrahat al-Ashram. Major Price (Essay) may be right in making Ababil the plural of Abilah, a vesicle; but it appears to me that the former is an Arabic and the latter a Persian word, which have no connection whatever. M.C. de Perceval, quoting the Sirat al-Rasul, which says that at that time small-pox first appeared in Arabia, ascribes the destruction of the host of Al-Yaman to an epidemic and a violent tempest. The strangest part of the story is, that although it occurred at Meccah, about two months before Mohammed's birth, and, therefore, within the memory of many living at the time, the Prophet alludes to it in the Koran as a miracle. [FN#14] In Al-Yaman, we are told by Niebuhr, a rude form of inoculation-the mother pricking the child's arm with a thorn-has been known from time immemorial. My Madinah friend assured me that only during the last generation, this practice has been introduced amongst the Badawin of Al-Hijaz. [FN#15] Orientals divide their diseases, as they do remedies and articles of diet, into hot, cold, and temperate.

[FN#16] This grain is cheaper than rice on the banks of the Nile-a fact which enlightened England, now paying a hundred times its value for "Revalenta Arabica," apparently ignores. [FN#17] Herodotus (Euterpe) has two allusions to eye disease, which seems to have afflicted the Egyptians from the most ancient times. Sesostris the Great died stone-blind; his successor lost his sight for ten years, and the Hermaic books had reason to devote a whole volume to ophthalmic disease. But in the old days of idolatry, the hygienic and prophylactic practices alluded to by Herodotus, the greater cleanliness of the people, and the attention paid to the canals and drainage, probably prevented this malarious disease becoming the scourge which it is now. The similarity of the soil and the climate of Egypt to those of Upper Sind, and the prevalence of the complaint in both countries, assist us in investigating the predisposing causes. These are, the nitrous and pungent nature of the soil-what the old Greek calls "acrid matter exuding from the earth,"-and the sudden transition from extreme dryness to excessive damp checking the invisible perspiration of the circumorbital parts, and flying to an organ which is already weakened by the fierce glare of the sun, and the fine dust raised by the Khamsin or the Chaliho. Glare and dust alone, seldom cause eye disease. Everyone knows that ophthalmia is unknown in the Desert, and the people of Al-Hijaz, who live in an atmosphere of blaze and sand, seldom lose their sight.

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