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.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 514 of 571
Words from 142387 to 142653
of 157964
