lood, I have found it superior to any mineral waters I have met with
in Europe. It has completely cured my Jew servant of a most
inveterate scurvy, under which he had laboured for a very considerable
time.

Notwithstanding the Moors possess this inestimable treasure near one
of their most opulent and populous cities, yet, owing to fabulous
tales, handed down by tradition from one generation to another, these
superstitious people will never drink or disturb the water; to do so
is reckoned sacrilege, and the offender is severely punished: for they
positively affirm, that one of their great saints has been transmuted
into it, and that at some distant period he will resume his natural
form, to perform a great many miracles, and to render the Moors rich
and happy, more so indeed than Mahomet has promised them in the other
world.

While I have been here, I have had daily intercourse with the most
eminent of their Tweebs. They pay me regular morning visits,
questioning me on several points. One day I was asked by what means
health was preserved, and what produced disease in the human body; I
answered, that, "among several other remote causes, the air, by its
different constitutions, had a great effect upon the human frame: that
diseases revolve periodically, and keep time and measure exactly with
the seasons of the year; and that either health or disease depended in
some measure on the universal influence of the air, by its gravity,
heat, cold, moisture, dryness, or exhalations." They have no idea of
natural philosophy, nor of the knowledge and physiology of the air, or
how to change and destroy its bad qualities in close and confined
places. After much persuasion, I prevailed on some of them to make use
of the fuming mixture of brimstone and aromatic ingredients, in all
cases of pestilential fevers. Though this is not so efficacious as
the nitrous acid, yet it will considerably abate the progress of
contagion, and they are acquainted with the materials of the former,
whereas they have not the smallest idea of the latter.

They are perfectly ignorant of the animal and comparative anatomy, and
of physiology and pathology. They have no notion either of the nervous
fluid, or of the solids, their restriction and relaxation. They have
no other idea of the fluids than the blood, to a superabundance of
which they attribute all the diseases incident to the human body. In
the spring they recommend bleeding, to ensure a good state