Always Engaged In Rough Exercises And
Perilous Journeys, They Have Learned A Kind Of Farriery And A Simple
System Of Surgery.
In cases of fracture they bind on splints with cloth
bands, and the patient drinks camel’s milk and clarified butter till he
is cured.
Cuts are carefully washed, sprinkled with meal gunpowder, and
sewn up. They dress gunshot wounds with raw camel’s flesh, and rely
entirely upon nature and diet. When bitten by snakes or stung by
scorpions, they scarify the wound with a razor, recite a charm, and
apply to it a dressing of garlic.[FN#45] The wealthy have Fiss or
ring-stones, brought from India, and used with a formula of prayer to
extract venom. Some few possess the Tariyak (Theriack) of Al-Irak—the
great counter-poison, internal as well as external, of the East. The
poorer classes all wear the Za’al or Hibas of Al-Yaman; two yarns of
black sheep’s wool tied round the leg, under the knee and above the
ankle. When bitten, the sufferer tightens these cords above the injured
part, which he immediately scarifies; thus they act as tourniquets.
These ligatures also cure cramps—and there is no other remedy. The Badawi
knowledge of medicine is unusually limited in this part of Arabia,
where even simples are not required by a people who rise with dawn, eat
little, always breathe Desert air, and “at night make the camels their
curfew.” The great tonic is clarified butter, and the Kay, or actual
cautery, is used even for rheumatism.
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