Travels in Turkey, Asia Minor, Syria, and across the desert into Egypt ...

ON OPHTHALMIA. 39I
ON OPHTHALMIA.
ALTHOUGH much has been clone both by the rude and enlightened
nations in the improvement of medicine in its va-
no means
rious branches, still the field is ample, the art having by
attained perfection. The communication, therefore, of informa-
tion acquired in practice, however trivial the facts may appear at
first view, may, at a future period, be found useful to others. Encouraged
in this opinion, I have been induced to arrange what has
occurred to me upon ophthalmia ; and shall be extremely happy if
any good shall result from my observations and practice. For ex-
cept the plague, I think there is not a disease in Syria and in Egypt
which produces more dreadful sufferings and distressful consequen-
ces than ophthalmia. The disease is there endemial, and rages
with violence annually, about the time when the Nile is low, and
the country in a state of extreme dryness.
In the months of May, June, July, and part of August, in
the year 1801, ophthalmia raged among the English and Ottoman
armies in Egypt. At that time the weather was extremely hot and
oppressive, occasionally accompanied by the kampsin, and by hot,
scorching winds from the north-east and north-west, carrying
clouds of dust into the atmosphere. The disease was then common,
and extremely distressing; for the troops being encamped, no
better shelter could be procured for the sick than a tent (those em-
ployed by the Ottomans are made of thin cotton), through which
the vivid and piercing rays of the sun easily pervaded, to the great
annoyance and pain of the suffering patients.
The ophthalmy of Egypt did not appear to differ from what we
had seen in Syria, i. e. at Jaffa, Ramla, Gaza, &c. At Jerusa-
lem, at Bethlehem, and in their environs, the disease and its effects
were manifested, though with less violence.
It was painful to view its effects at
Jaffa, where it appeared
to
fne that the one half of the inhabitants had lost either one or both
the eyes. Their houses are built of a white friable calcareous stone,
die streets are very narrow, and they live in a very confined man-
ner, tending to generate disease.