The author of this work having returned from a long residence at Aleppo, where he practiced physic, proposed to himself to give an account of the epidemical diseases of that place, and particularly the plague, which he had an opportunity of observing for three different years, but was insensibly led to enlarge his plan, into an account of the natural productions of the place and the customs of the inhabitants. He makes no magnificent professions, and has performed as much as he promised.2 His accounts have all the appearance of truth, and his stile, though it has been censured, is not more vitious3 than that of many writers, who have had better opportunities of cultivating our language. There are indeed parts which I wish extended, and parts which I should be well pleased with the contraction; but every man has his particular views, and studies, and writes for minds congenial to his own.

Aleppo, in the language of the natives Haleb, is the metropolis of Syria, its latitude is 36° 12′ N. its longitude is generally supposed 37° 40′ E. from London. The city with the suburbs is about seven miles in circumference. It is well built, but the houses have no windows towards the street, which give the place an unpleasant appearance to European eyes.

The situation of Aleppo seems to have been determined by the course of a small stream called Coic, which waters the gardens, water being so scarce in Syria that there is only one river, the Orontes, and the inhabitants of most places are supplied by rain which they save in cisterns.

The country round it produces great variety of plants, both esculent and physical,4 but is very naked of trees; many of the plants our author has enumerated, and of some not yet mentioned by the botanists he has given descriptions, and very elegant plates. He has been no less attentive to the animals, and has procured several birds and fishes not known in this part of the world, to be very beautifully and, I suppose, very exactly engraved. But of things so much discriminated by their colours as birds and flowers, mere gradations of blackness give but a very imperfect representation.

Of the “sheep” with the “great tail” mention is so commonly made, that many will be glad to know what is said of them by a man that has so often seen them. They are the most numerous of the species about Aleppo, and those of the largest sort fatted for the table will weigh when they are killed, flayed, and opened, about one hundred and fifty pounds, of which the tail makes fifty. The skin of the under part of the tail is so bare and thin, that the shepherds fix a light board under it to save it from injuries, and to this board they sometimes fix wheels, so that it is not merely fabulous to say that the sheep draw their own tails in carts, except that the cart is not to ease them of burden, but to save them from hurt. The author does not tell us how they sleep, or whether their tails are disengaged at night.

The principal beast of burden is the Camel, of which the species are four, the Turkman Camel, the Arab, the Dromedary, and the Camel with two bunches. The Turkman Camel is the largest, his common load is 800 pounds, but he cannot bear heat, and therefore lies still in the summer months.

The Arab being smaller carries about 500 pounds; he can endure heat and scarcely needs any sustenance but the thistles which he crops as he goes along loaded. They have been known to travel fifteen days without water, but then drank so eagerly that many died.

The Dromedary seems the most elegant sort of the Arab Camel, and perhaps differs from him only as a race-horse from a cart-horse. The Camel with two bunches is bred in Persia, and is only seen at Aleppo in the caravans. He differs from the Arab in having two bunches.

Of Asses they have two sorts, one small, like ours, the other much larger with ears remarkably long, which is, I suppose the ass on which the orientals are so often mentioned as riding.

There are Hyenas in the hills, of which our author had the opportunity of examining one that was killed. It was somewhat bigger than a mastiff; its colour was gray transversly streaked with black; it had a long white mane down the neck and back. That it changes its sex annually or that it can imitate the human voice, there is no reason to believe, but it preys upon the flocks, and is still supposed to rob graves.5

They have many serpents extremely venomous, but as the fields are naked they are easily avoided. The Scolopendra6 and Scorpion are often felt, but all the consequence is the pain of a few hours.

The inhabitants of Aleppo are by a computation not very exact, reckoned to be 235,000, of whom 200,000 are Turks,7 30,000 Christians, and 5,000 Jews. Of the Christians the greater number are Greeks, then Armenians, then Syrians, then lastly Maronites, who each have a church. The general language is the vulgar Arabic.8

Between these several sorts of people there is no great difference. They are generally of a middle stature, not vigorous or active. The women are not unhandsom, but as they are married about fourteen, they grow old at thirty. Their labours are remarkably easy, the more robust rise to work the next day, and the most delicate seldom are confined above twelve days.

The people, even the Mahometans, are not uncivil, and though, as in many other places, the greater number cannot be much commended, yet there are not wanting honest men of every religion.9

The usual treat given to a visitant is a dish of coffee, without milk or sugar, with a pipe of tobacco, and a little sweat-meat; and when they would express great respect they offer sherbet, sprinkle perfumed water, and burn aloes wood, after which it is expected that the stranger should depart. They use tobacco much, but the polite and wealthy smoke by the nargeery, which is an instrument that cools the smoke, by making it pass through the water, along a pipe, I suppose, like the worm of a still.1 Opium is not taken by these or any other Turks, in the excess imputed to them, those who use it being considered as debauched persons, and called teriaky, from theriaca, an opiate composition. These men soon wither, lose their memories, and die early with all the symptoms of old age.

Their bagnios2 are well contrived both for use and privacy, and are much frequented by the women, to whose use most bagnios are appointed in the afternoon; and who enjoying here almost all the liberty of conversation that is allowed them, form themselves into little parties and drink coffee together.

They use little exercise. When they remove, the men ride on horseback; and the women of wealth, if the distance be too far for walking, are carried in a litter. They go to bed soon and rise early; their beds which consist only of a matrass and a coverlet, are made in the summer on the top of the house, which is always flat, in the open air, or on the ground in the yard. In the winter they sleep in the lowest roofed room on the ground floor. The people of higher condition are lulled to rest by music, or by a wild story which the women are taught, and of which being not accustomed to have their minds feasted with much variety of images, they are, I suppose, able to bear the repetition a thousand times.3

When they are at home they amuse themselves with chess, or some other game of a sedentary kind; but when they assemble to be merry in larger bodies, they have always buffoons to divert them, “without whom,” says the author, “their mirth and conversation would soon languish or conclude.”4

The Mahometans are extremely illiterate; many bashaws and farmers of the customs cannot read. Only one of the inhabitants of Aleppo had astronomy enough to calculate an eclipse. They have many schools or colleges in the city, but there is little taught in them. Physic is in great esteem among them, and its professors by consequence are numerous; but they are almost all foreigners, there being no means by which the natives can acquire any medical knowledge in a country, where no physic is publicly taught, nor any anatomy ever practised. Like other ignorant medicasters5 they consider more the passions of the patient than his disease, use a great pomp of medicines when there is no danger, and as he approaches the grave withdraw from him. Here, as in other places, folly and censure make the task of the physician more difficult, the last medicine being always supposed to have destroyed him who dies of a distemper.6

As dress is not easily described by words, the clothes of the people of Aleppo are represented by plates.

The Turks are commended for their temperance by European writers beyond their merit. They eat three set meals a day, and are often regaling themselves with fruit between them. They use no knife or fork at table. Their liquor at dinner is water, and coffee after it.

In the month of Ramadan or stated season of abstinence they fast from the dawn to sunset; but those who are rich enough to sleep in the day eat all night, and live so luxuriously as to spend twice as much in that month as in any other, but this month is to the poor a time of real mortification.

Though wine is forbidden them, the number of those who drink it is very considerable, but it is done with privacy.

They are obliged to wash before every time of prayer, which are five in a day, and custom and cleanliness oblige them to wash at so many other times, that much of the day is spent in the use of water.

They consider themselves as allowed four wives, and an unlimited number of concubines, but few have more than two, and poor men scarcely ever more than one. Yet the author has known forty kept by some of the wealthy. This multitude of rivals sometimes gives the master disturbance, but being trained up in servile obedience, they commonly live well together. They may divorce their wives at pleasure, but then they lose the sum which they gave for them, and commonly pay by contract another sum equal to the first.

When a woman has a son marriageable, she takes an opportunity of seeing the young women of the place, and when she has made her choice applies to the girl’s mother, who takes care to make inquiry into the character of the young man, whose father, if no objection arises, demands the maid of her parents; the price to be paid for her is fixed, and a licence obtained from the kade.7 Proxies are then appointed, whose hands after a few questions are joined by the imaum, the money is paid, and the bridegroom may now call for his bride. The money paid for her is with some addition laid out in ornaments and furniture, which are sent to his house. He then invites all his friends, and entertains them three days before the wedding with great plenty. His female relations then go to fetch the bride, who comes with the mother and kinswomen, and the men and women feast that day in separate apartments. At night upon notice given to the women the bridegroom is introduced into the court-yard of the womens apartment, where his own kinswomen meet him, and sing and dance before him to the stair-foot of the bride’s chamber, who receives him veiled at the middle of the stairs.

Of their slaves, some are negroes from Ethiopia, but far the greater are Georgians or captives of war. They are generally well treated.

The women are suffered to go abroad very little, except that they must use the bagnio, and on Mondays and Thursdays they have a kind of religious custom of visiting the tombs of their relations: this they have so far improved, that almost every Thursday is allotted to a particular saint, whose tomb is to be visited on that day. They always go in companies, and are guarded by a boy and an old woman.

The Harum, or womens apartment, is guarded in rich houses by a black eunuch. The Turks think it too disgraceful to treat their women with much regard, and therefore leave them to the management of their guardians.

When a Turk dies, the women begin to shriek, and continue their clamorous lamentations till the body is buried. They immediately wash the corps, stop all its natural passages with cotton, and wrap it up in a cotton cloth, then lay it in a coffin; at the head is erected a short staff, on which a head-dress is placed, shewing the sex of the deceased: The bier is carried in their turns by almost all that happen to be present. The male relations follow it first, and then the females, who shriek all the way to the mosque, where the imaum says a service.

The graves lie east and west: they lay the head to the west, turning the body to the right side that the face may look southward towards Mecca. The grave is covered below the surface with flat stones to keep the earth from falling in upon the body, and the last words are used to the deceased, which are very solemn:

The nearest relations go to the grave on the third, seventh, and fortieth days, and that day twelve months, after their friend’s decease, the women dress the tomb with flowers and greens, every Monday and Thursday.

The men wear no mourning, but the women put on their gravest clothes, and for a husband lay aside their jewels twelve months, and six months for a father. At least before a widow marries again, she must mourn forty days her husband without going out of the house, or speaking unnecessarily even to her nearest relations. These days are chosen in any part of the first year.

The Mahometans observe their hours of prayer very strictly, give alms to the poor, and entertain strangers, but are so little attentive to all other duties, that the muftee9 of Aleppo desired the author in representing their religion at home to consider it as directly opposite to their practice.

Their bashaws1 are not now chosen out of their slaves, but commonly purchase their places, and repay themselves by extortion. The kadees or judges are much influenced by money, and witnesses may be always hired. The kadee, however, will commonly decide right for less than he will expect for deciding wrong. They dispatch the affair soon, and the cost of ten in the hundred upon the sum litigated is paid to him who carries the cause, however unjust the demand may appear on the side of his opponent.

It is not true that a man after his pilgrimage to Mecca is exempt from capital punishment, for many of the pilgrims are hanged in the way as they return.

The Christians of this country observe many days of abstinence, and some will not break their fast though their lives are endangered. Their women are as closely veiled, and as much confined as with the Turks, and are commonly contracted by their parents while they were children. The Maronites, from whom the other Christians differ but little, perform the nuptial ceremony in this manner.

The bride is demanded of her father, to whose house the bridegroom’s relations are then invited to consult about the wedding day. On the day fixed, which is commonly that day fortnight, they sup again at the bride’s house, then return to that of the bridegroom, whom custom requires to hide himself; he is at last found undressed in some obscure corner, and then is led with the bridesman round the court in triumph to a room where the wedding clothes are laid out. A priest says a long prayer over them: the bridegroom is dressed, and they are with great noise led round the yard again.

After midnight all the company invited to the wedding return to the bride’s house, each carrying a candle, and music playing before them; they knock at the door, and demand the bride, who is always refused, and to be gained by storm, in which the friends of the bridegroom are never repulsed.

In countries where wine is more liberally drank, these fights would sometimes end in mischief.2

The bride is then brought out covered with a veil all over, and led to the bridegroom’s, accompanied by a sister or a near female relation. She is set down at the upper end of the womens room, where she is to sit veiled with her eyes shut, silent, and motionless, except that she rises to all that come in, as their entrance is notified to her by an attendant. The rest of the night is spent in their separate apartments with great noise and merriment.

Next day the bishop or a priest comes to conclude the ceremony. The women are all veiled, the bride is quite covered, and stands supported by two women. The bridegroom gorgeously dressed enters with the bishop, and with the brideman is placed at the lady’s left-hand. The bishop after a short service puts a crown upon the head, first of the bridegroom, then of the bride, and afterwards of the brideman and bridemaid, then joins their hands, puts a ring on the bridegroom’s finger, and delivers another to the bridemaid to be put on that of the bride, and near the conclusion ties a ribband about the bridegroom’s neck, which a priest comes to take off in the afternoon. They then return into the mens apartment, where dinner is prepared for the bishop, in whose presence all behave with great gravity, but he soon leaves them, and the feast begins with noise and revelry, music, and buffoonery.

At night the bridegroom is led to the bride’s chamber, where he presents her to a glass of wine, and they drink to each other, he then goes back, and is obliged to endure the noise and riot of the company till the afternoon of the next day. He is then left to a few select friends, and at midnight is suffered to go to his wife. Presents are sent by all the company. The bride receives flowers from all the women of her acquaintance, and seven days after her relations visit her. The bride never speaks for the first month, except a very little to her husband, and is particularly lessoned by the old matrons not to talk to him too soon.

The women commonly wait on their husbands at the table, they never appear unveiled before them, and are rarely permitted to leave the house.

The author, after this account of the inhabitants of Aleppo subjoins a view of their diseases, in which there is nothing very observable; and a kind of journal which from many pages exhibits no very entertaining narrative of heat and cold, rain and sunshine. But the remarks with which he concludes the book, on the plague, and the mal d’Aleppo, or Aleppo disease, deserve particular regard.

The plague, which is never so violent there as in Europe, is expected upon long experience once in about ten years. It is moderate in the winter, gathers great strength with the increasing heat, is at its height in June, and in August certainly ceases. To have had it once is no security against the infection.

The symptoms of the plague are different in different bodies. But it generally began with a chilness and vomiting, pain in the loins or back, intense head-ach, giddiness, and loss of strength, with a great uneasiness at the pit of the stomach, and shooting pains about the jaws, groin and arm-pits.

A violent fever followed, in which the body was scorched inwardly, though no uncommon heat was discovered in the skin. The heat was sometimes universal; sometimes it affected particular parts, and had many exacerbations and remissions in a day. The face as the heat increased first glowed, then grew livid, then pale. The eyes were cloudy and the whole countenance inexpressibly confused. The pulse was at first little altered, but soon grew quick, and afterwards often changed without any visible concurrence with other symptoms. In the parts where shooting pains were felt, a hard tumour might be discovered deep in the flesh, without any discoloration of the skin; these tumours ripened into buboes.3

The danger could not be estimated from the first symptoms, for sometimes the most violent fever would cease in a few hours, and leave nothing behind it, but weakness, and the pain of the increasing buboes, which are sometimes fifteen days before their suppuration, but never confine the patient.

Several died at the first seizure, and of those the arm-pits and groins turned black, and the whole body was covered with petechial4 stains, and livid pustules.

The greater part, however, survived the first attack, and had these symptoms more violent in the evening; their heat increased, their tongue faltered, and their senses were impaired. Towards morning the heat abated, the delirium ceased, and their great complaint was of the pain in their heads, and that of their buboes. About half of them had on some part or other of their bodies a carbuncle or painful pustule, which soon grew livid with intense burning pain. This pustule increased to an inch and a half, sometimes more in diameter.

The second day passed in frequent remissions and exacerbations; every paroxysm became more and more violent, till in the evening a coma or morbid slumber came on, and the pulse became too low and quick to be counted, the buboes subsided, and the circle of the carbuncle turned black.

In this state on the third day many died, and others were relieved from it by a critical sweat, which some did not obtain till the fifth day, some not till the seventh, and a very few not till the eleventh day.

A copious sweat on the third day was always salutary, yet did not perhaps wholly discharge the disease, but left some remains to be carried off by another sweat on the fifth day, after which the patient was only troubled with this buboes and carbuncles. The buboes often resolved without any suppuration even in those that recovered.

During the course of the disease, in some the tongue was moist, in others black and furred; some had an unquenchable thirst, at irregular intervals, others refused liquors. Some were lax, others costive, but most had the natural evacuation; the urine was uncertain, but commonly yellowish, and without sediment. A few had hæmorrhages, which, otherwise than in other pestilential cases, were commonly forerunners of a critical sweat.

Other years produced some small diversity of symptoms, but not such as altered the general indications, or influenced the method of cure, which the author proposes with great modesty, having observed, that the natives have gained no knowledge by the frequency of this distemper. Of so small importance is experience, where there is no power of rational deduction.5

At the beginning of the disease phlebotomy was useful, but afterwards mischievous. A vomit with warm water, or a very gentle emetic, was likewise very helpful on the first day. Strong purges were hurtful, but gentle laxatives relieved the head, and a strong cathartic after the critical sweat promoted, by whatever means, the suppuration of the buboes.

The natural crisis of the disease being always by sweat, it was natural to try sudorifics, but they were dangerous on the first day, because it had not the effect intended, they inflamed the malady. The author seems to have tried only the gentle diaphoretics,6 and recommends rad. contrayerva, and Valer. silvestris, in which, I suppose, nobody will much confide; and indeed, he has little acquaintance with physic, who does not know the uncertainty of the man’s state, whose recovery depends on the excitement of a sweat by internal medicines.7

The bark he was not suffered to try, and the Virginia snake-root was too bitter to be taken by them, whose distaste was not much balanced by their hope in physic. Nitre was of no use.8

The method of cure practiced by our author was this. At the first seizure he drew from ten to twenty ounces of blood from the arm, but seldom more than twelve ounces. He then vomited the patients with warm water or a weak emetic, and then gave a weak opiate. He then exhibited9 diaphoretics every four hours, with as large draughts of diluting liquors, as they could be persuaded to drink. In the winter a fire was made in the chamber; in the summer the fresh air was admitted. When they were faint they drank a cordial julap sweetened with syrup of white poppies.

This regimen commonly produced a sweat on the second or third day, after which a mild cathartic was given; the other medicines were continued, and an anodyne was ordered in the evening.

When the buboes subsided, they were quickened by a blister. When a lethargy came on, a blister was applied to the head, or a cataplasm of garlick to the feet with great advantage. The buboes were suppurated by a warm plaster, the carbuncles always mortified but soon separated, and the digestion afterwards was very quick.

As it is more easy to shun the plague than to cure it, it is not useless to mention the precautions taken by foreignersa at Aleppo against infection, which are more worthy of notice as they are commonly successful.

The English used formerly to retire into the country, and incamp in the mountains while the infection continued, but now they stay in the city, and in the winter months while the disease advances slowly, content themselves to converse as little as is possible with the natives, and to confine their servants as much as they can. When this disease begins to rage they form parties, shut themselves up in the most airy and commodious houses, and keep their doors fast from April to July. They take care to have in the house one that can shave, and to confine their cats; if a strange cat intrudes, they shoot him, and they throw him out with the tongs. They receive their victuals at a window by a rope, to the lower end of which hangs a chain, and a pail of iron; their provisions are taken out of the pail with a pair of tongs; the flesh is dipped in water mixed with vinegar, and hung up for some time; the bread is well aired, and the letters are smoked with sulphur. After the doors are opened the same precautions are used for some weeks, as before they were shut.

For those who are obliged to converse with the sick, the author gives some rules, with no great confidence, as rather useful than certain. He directs, never to go out fasting, to avoid all excess, passions, and evacuations more than are usual, yet not to eat or drink below the usual rate: but rather to fortify the constitution by a generous glass. In this he has the concurrence of Dr. Willis.1 In any immediate danger, not to swallow the spittle, and to breathe through a spunge wet with an infusion of rue in vinegar, or vinegar alone, which is probably as good, the virtues of rue to resist infection, being, I fear, imaginary.2 To hold the breath near the sick, and as soon as is possible to wash the mouth, face and hands with vinegar. To change the clothes soon, and again to use a wash of vinegar. the only preservative medicine used was the bark.

Of the disease of Aleppo, called by the natives the botch of a year, the species are commonly reckoned two, but the author imagines them to be three.

The male disease is a small red tubercle about as big as a pin’s head, which in time spreads to the breadth of a six-pence, forms a scurf and a scab which in about eight months falls off, and leaves a small mark,

The female gives some pain, increases to twice the compass of the male, and becomes a shallow ulcer, with a livid circle on the outside; it is commonly well in a year, but leaves a scar which continues through life.

The first sort, which the natives call a sting of a millepode, never grows large or gives pain.

This disease none of the natives escape, and most foreigners have it in a few months after their arrival; other animals are subject to it.

The female only requires any cure, and in this the author found nothing so efficacious as the mercurial plaster.