Page:Thirty-five years in the East.djvu/52

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THIRTY-FIVE YEARS IN THE EAST.

this process the patient was saved. On the day of the recovery of the bishop, I had an opportunity to cure another patient, which occasioned a great sensation. The sexton of the patriarch was troubled with a tertian-ague. It was the fever day, and the patient complained of feeling dizzy, want of appetite, a bitter taste in his mouth ; he looked very ill, and the white of his eyes was rather of a yellow colour. I ordered him an emetic, he vomited, and a long tape-worm was expelled, which I drew until it broke. On giving him a second dose of solution of tartar-emetic, it operated, and caused the ejection of the rest of the worm by an evacuation. I ordered the pieces of the ejected worm to be washed. I measured them afterwards, and they were fifty-two yards long. I found among them three heads, and I concluded that three tape-worms were there, consequently the denomination of solitaris is a wrong one. It was the broad tape-worm. I kept the pieces in spirit ; but it was no extraordinary novelty for those people, as the disease of the tape-worm is very common on the Lebanon. Whilst I was measuring the tape-worm, the old patriarch Hanna stepped in, and asked me, with a smile, if I knew Bonaparte ? I answered that I knew him by name only. He continued ; people arriving just now from Tripoli, bring the news, that Bonaparte has died in the English prison. Then that great genius has come to an end, said I, whose memory will for ever be revered in France !

The inhabitants of the Lebanon are of opinion that the frequent disease of tape-worm in their country is caused by their eating raw flesh, and afterwards drinking brandy immoderately, which may indeed be considered as a secondary cause. I ascribe the principal cause of the frequent appearance of this disease on the Lebanon, to the fact, that the poor people of that country, who are mostly affected with it, are living in rooms where they are breeding silk worms, also sleeping in the same apartments, and breathing the noxious air of the rotten substances and putrefied mulberry leaves which serve as food to these worms. I cherish this opinion so much the more, as the root of the