Page:Thirty-five years in the East.djvu/53

Rh white mulberry-tree is considered, according to the Homoeopathic principle, as a worm-destroying substance (anthelminticum). Those people have a particular method of curing the tape-worm when it becomes annoying by unpleasant symptoms. They take, early in the morning,before breakfast, a small piece of common soap, enveloped in the skin of a fig ; afterwards, they roast a piece of fat meat on a fire of charcoal, in order to coax the worm (as they believe) to come up from the intestines to the stomach ; they chew the roast meat, without swallowing the spittle or the juice. Believing the worm to be in the stomach, which they think they feel afterwards, they drink a good draught of vinegar, or even strong spirits, stopping their nostrils, which is supposed to aftect the worm (perhaps also the man) with intoxication, by means of which the worm is driven to the lower parts of the intestines, and ultimately ejected by a brisk purge, such as in a civilized country would only be employed by a veterinary surgeon. If the worm is in the stomach, then the next process is that of administering tartar-emetic (as I have previously alluded to), and thus preventing the necessity of using spirits, and the drastic purgative. But if it is probable that the purgative will, together with the worm, eject also the mucus, then it is advisable to administer, a few days after the ejection of the worm, the purgative, but without the assistance of spirits, or vinegar.

Not far from Kannobin, below the highest summits of the Lebanon, covered with eternal snow, beneath which the well-known cedar-trees grow, are the villages of Eden and Besherri, where I succeeded in effecting many cures in the summer of 1821.

The chiefs of the Maronites and Druses (Emir Beshir and Sheikh Beshir) on arriving at Besherri to meet the rebels, applied to me for medical assistance ; and at a later period I was invited to their residences (Tidin and Muktara), where I practised for some time, so that I livedt for several years very agreeably, enjoying the mos beautiful and romantic views of the Holy Land (Palestine)*