The Diseases that are most frequent in Fezzan are those of the inflammatory, and those of the putrid kind. The small-pox is common among the inhabitants; violent head-achs attack them in the Summer; and they are often afflicted with rheumatic pains. Their old women are their principal physicians. For pains in the head they prescribe cupping and bleeding; for pains in the limbs they send their patients to bathe in the hot lakes, which produce the trona; and for obstinate achs and strains, and long continued stiffness in the muscles, they have recourse, like the horse-doctors of Europe and the physicians of Barbary, to the application of a burning iron. The use of the strongest oils, and of the most powerful herbs, is also frequent among them. To the nature of their climate the greatest part of their diseases is probably owing; and to this cause they are certainly indebted for the extraordinary multitude of noxious and of loathsome animals that infest their country. Adders, snakes, scorpions, and toads, are the constant inhabitants of their fields, their gardens, and their houses. The air is crowded with mosquitos; and persons of every rank are over-run with all the different kinds of vermin that attack the beggars of Europe; and though in the Summer the fleas entirely disappear, the inhabitants are scarcely sensible of relief. In their persons, the natives of Fezzan incline to the Negro much more than to the Arab cast. Those who travelled with Mr. LUCAS from Tripoli to Mesurata, and who were fourteen in number, had short curly black hair, thick lips, flat broad noses, and a dark[5] skin, which, either from their habitual nastiness, the vermin with which they are covered, or the natural rankness of their perspiration, emits the most nauseous and fetid effluvia. They are tall, but not strong; well shaped, yet indolent, inactive, and weak; and though the Shereef Fouwad is described as majestic in his appearance, yet his countrymen, in general, are considered at Tripoli as a people of remarkable ugliness. In their common intercourse with each other all distinctions of rank appear to be forgotten; for the Shereef and the lowest plebeian, the rich and the poor, the master and the man, converse familiarly, and eat and drink together. Generous and eminently hospitable, the Fezzanner, let his fare be scanty or abundant, is ever desirous that others should partake of his meal; and if twenty people should unexpectedly visit his dwelling, they must all participate as far as it will go.