As ophthalmia is very prevalent in Egypt, the ignorant people of this country resort to many ridiculous practices of a superstitious nature for its cure. Some, for this purpose, take a piece of dried mud from the Bank of the Nile at or near Boolák, the principal port of Cairo, and, crossing the river, deposit it on the opposite bank, at Imbábeh. This is considered sufficient to insure a cure.—Others, with the same view, hang to the head-dress, over the forehead, or over the diseased eye, a Venetian sequin; but it must be one of a particular description, in which the figures on each side correspond, head to head, and feet to feet.[389] Yet, if a person having a Venetian sequin, or a dollar, in his pocket, enter the room of one who is suffering from ophthalmia or fever, his presence is thought to aggravate the complaint. It is also a general belief, here, that, if an individual in a state of religious uncleanness enter a room in which is a person afflicted with ophthalmia, the patient’s disease will consequently be aggravated, and that a speck will appear in one or each of his eyes. A man with whom I am acquainted has, at the time I write this, just come out of a room in which he had confined himself, while suffering from ophthalmia, for about three months, from this fear; never allowing any person to enter; his servant always placing his food outside his door. He has, however, come out with a speck in one of his eyes. Another practice, which is often adopted in similar cases, but mostly by women, and frequently with the view of preventing barrenness, is very singular and disgusting. The large open place called the Rumeyleh, on the west of the Citadel of Cairo, is a common scene of the execution of criminals; and the decapitation of persons convicted of capital offences in the metropolis was formerly almost always performed there, rather than in any other part of the town. On the south of this place is a building called “Maghsil es-Sultán,” or the Sultán’s washing-place for the dead; where is a table of stone, upon which the body of every person who is decapitated is washed, previously to its burial, and there is a trough to receive the water, which is never poured out, but remains tainted with the blood, and fetid. Many a woman goes thither, and, for the cure of ophthalmia, or to obtain offspring, or to expedite delivery in the case of a protracted pregnancy, without speaking (for silence is deemed absolutely necessary), passes under the stone table above mentioned, with the left foot foremost, and then over it; and does this seven times; after which, she washes her face with the polluted water that is in the trough, and gives five or ten faddahs to an old man and his wife, who keep the place; then goes away, still without speaking. Men, in the case of ophthalmia, often do the same. The Maghsil is said to have been built by the famous Beybars, before he became Sultán; in consequence of his observing that the remains of persons decapitated in