er mercies. Only I found that when my first
patient began to dance with the joy and pain of the noble blister
which shortly arose, so many people fancied they needed like treatment
that I was obliged to restrict the use of so popular a cure to special
cases.

One branch of Moroccan medicine consists in exorcising devils, of
which a most amusing instance once came under my notice. An English
gentleman gave one of his servants who complained of being troubled
with these unwelcome guests two good-sized doses of tartaric acid and
carbonate of soda a second apart. The immediate exit of the devil was
so apparent that the fame of the prescriber as a medical man was made
at once. But many of the cases which the amateur is called upon to
treat are much more difficult to satisfy than this. Superstition is
so strongly mingled with the native ideas of disease,--of being
possessed,--that the two can hardly be separated. During an epidemic
of cholera, for instance, the people keep as close as possible to
walls, and avoid sand-hills, for fear of "catching devils." All
disease is indeed more or less ascribed to satanic agency, and in
Morocco that practitioner is most in repute who claims to attack this
cause of the malady rather than its effect.

Although the Moors have a certain rudimentary acquaintance with simple
medicinal agents--and how rudimentary that acquaintance is, will
better appear from what is to follow,--in all their pharmacop[oe]ia
no remedy is so often recommended or so implicitly relied on as the
"writing" of a man of reputed sanctity. Such a writing may consist
merely of a piece of paper scribbled over with the name of God, or
with some sentence from the Koran, such as, "And only God is the
Healer," repeated many times, or in special cases it may contain a
whole series of pious expressions and meaningless incantations. For an
ordinary external complaint, such as general debility arising from
the evil eye of a neighbour or a jealous wife, or as a preventative
against bewitchment, or as a love philtre, it is usually considered
sufficient to wear this in a leather bag around the neck or forehead;
but in case of unfathomable internal disease, such as indigestion, the
"writing" is prescribed to be divided into so many equal portions, and
taken in a little water night and morning.

The author of these potent documents is sometimes a hereditary saint
descended from Mohammed, sometimes a saint whose sanctity arises from
r