Page:Thirty-five years in the East.djvu/49

Rh and,in consequence of his sedentary life, was troubled with hemorrhoids and obstructions. He consulted me, and when I ordered him to apply a clyster, he measured me wildly with his eyes, as if I had ordered him some dangerous remedy ; I repented having done so. I remembered afterwards, that the Arabian physicians, although aware of the efficacy of clysters, as they are recommended in their medical books, seldom apply them, and only in cases where all other remedies fail, as they consider it as a last resource ; in a country where pederasty is in vogue, it is disgraceful to acknowledge that fact. At his request for a proper remedy to be taken by the mouth, I prepared for him the well known aloetic dinner-pills, mentioned in the second volume of this work, from which he found great benefit.

Besides these pills, I ordered him to observe the following rules : Post coenam stabis, vel possus mille meabis, or — " After dinner, sit a while ; After supper, walk a mile."

For several years I spent the cold seasons in the maritime towns on the Syrian coast, at Tripoli or Beyrout, where the winters are only rainy ; but I passed the hot summer-months in the most agreeable regions of Mount Lebanon. At Araba, not far from Seyda, I made the acquaintance of that original person, Lady Hester Stanhope, who called herself Queen of Palmyra. I was told that she ordered a herd of goats to be killed, and buried, and paid the people who did so, well, only because a few of them were scabby, and she thought by that expedient to prevent epidemical diseases, which might occur by their eating the flesh, or drinking the milk. Not far from Tripoli, there lay at the foot of the Lebanon, in a very romantic valley, a village called Mesrut-ul-Toofah (apple-district), where I was requested to attend some fever patients. My friends advised