DISEASES. 193 is then free from sick, and the whole of Kordofan may be regarded as one large hospital. The total want of European medical men who are only to be found attached to the army at Lobeid—during my residence in this town, there were none at all there, for the only one I met with very soon died—is a circumstance deeply to be regretted ; and it has generally happened that those sent into the province have paid their tribute to the climate, or were soon thus far disabled that they could be of no assistance to other sufferers. There is, indeed, no lack of native doctors, but it may be easily imagined to what system of treatment a patient is subjected under their hands. Add to this the favourite, Allah kerim" (as God will) of the Mahommedans, and we may readily understand the reason why they never resort to means for suppressing a slight indisposition until it increases to a frightful disease. Before parents offer their children relief in sickness, or before the children attend to their parents, they consult Fakeers and writers of amulets, and the like fanatics and fortune-tellers, and their advice must have proved useless. The chief diseases are fevers, dysentery, abscesses about the neck (named durore), dropsy, small-pox, jiggers, skin diseases, and lues. Every resident in the country is attacked with fever, and all precautionary measures to avert the evil, such as a regular life, etc., are generally speaking futile. I found, on the contrary, that those persons who indulged in