of returning violence, or complained that the
whole affair was a fraud, it was taken as a sure sign that he had not
had enough, and he was forthwith seized again and the dose repeated
till he had learned that discretion was the better part of valour, and
slunk off, perhaps a wiser, certainly a sadder man. It is said, and I
do not doubt it--though it is more than most medical men can say of
their patients--that no one was ever known to return in quest of
further treatment.

All this, however, is nothing compared with the Moor's love of fire as
a universal panacea. Not only for his mules and his horses, but
also for himself and his family, cauterization is in high repute,
especially as he estimates the value of a remedy as much by its
immediate and visible action as by its ultimate effects. The
"fire-doctor" is therefore even a greater character in his way than
the "bleeder," whom we have just visited. His outfit includes a
collection of queer-shaped irons designed to cauterize different parts
of the body, a portable brazier, and bellows made from a goat-skin
with a piece of board at one side wherewith to press and expel the air
through a tube on the other side. He, too, sits by the roadside, and
disposes of his groaning though wonderfully enduring "patients" much
as did his rival of the lancet. Rohlfs, a German doctor who explored
parts of Morocco in the garb of a native, exercising what he could of
his profession for a livelihood, tells how he earned a considerable
reputation by the introduction of "cold fire" (lunar caustic) as a
rival to the original style; and Pellow, an English slave who made
his escape in 1735, found cayenne pepper of great assistance in
ingratiating himself with the Moors in this way, and even in delaying
a pursuer suffering from ophthalmia by blowing a little into his eyes
before his identity was discovered. In extenuation of this trick,
however, it must be borne in mind that cayenne pepper is an accredited
Moorish remedy for ophthalmia, being placed on the eyelids, though it
is only a mixture of canary seed and sugar that is blown in.

Every European traveller in Morocco is supposed to know something
about medicine, and many have been my own amusing experiences in this
direction. Nothing that I used gave me greater fame than a bottle of
oil of cantharides, the contents of which I applied freely behind the
ears or upon the temples of such victims of ophthalmia as submitted
themselves to my tend