Every European traveller in Morocco is supposed to know something about medicine, and many have been my own amusing experiences in this direction. Nothing that I used gave me greater fame than a bottle of oil of cantharides, the contents of which I applied freely behind the ears or upon the temples of such victims of ophthalmia as submitted themselves to my tender 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 Korán, 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.