water, and then formed into an ointment with fat. It worked like a charm
with the coorash.

Faith is the drug that is supposed to cure the Arab; whatever his
complaint may be, he applies to his Faky or priest. This minister is not
troubled with a confusion of book-learning, neither are the shelves of
his library bending beneath weighty treatises upon the various maladies
of human nature; but he possesses the key to all learning, the talisman
that will apply to all cases, in that one holy book, the Koran. This is
his complete pharmacopoeia: his medicine chest, combining purgatives,
blisters, sudorifies, styptics, narcotics, emetics, and all that the
most profound M.D. could prescribe. With this "multum in parvo"
stock-in-trade the Faky receives his patients. No. 1 arrives, a barren
woman who requests some medicine that will promote the blessing of
childbirth. No. 2, a man who was strong in his youth, but from excessive
dissipation has become useless. No. 3, a man deformed from his birth,
who wishes to become straight as other men. No. 4, a blind child. No. 5,
a dying old woman, carried on a litter; and sundry other impossible
cases, with others of a more simple character.

The Faky produces his book, the holy Koran, and with a pen formed of a
reed he proceeds to write a prescription--not to be made up by an
apothecary, as such dangerous people do not exist; but the prescription
itself is to be SWALLOWED! Upon a smooth board, like a slate, he rubs
sufficient lime to produce a perfectly white surface; upon this he
writes in large characters, with thick glutinous ink, a verse or verses
from the Koran that he considers applicable to the case; this completed,
he washes off the holy quotation, and converts it into a potation by the
addition of a little water; this is swallowed in perfect faith by the
patient, who in return pays a fee according to the demand of the Faky.