THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ALEPPO, AND PARTS ADJACENT. CONTAINING A DESCRIPTION of the CITY, and the Principal NATURAL PRODUCTIONS in its Neighbourhood; TOGETHER WITH An Account of the CLIMATE, INHABITANTS, and DISEASES; particularly of the PLAGUE, with the Methods used by the EUROPEANS for their Preservation. By ALEX. RUSSELL, M. D. LONDON, Printed for A. MILLAR, in the Strand. MDCCLVI. TO ALEXANDER DRUMMOND Esq; CONSUL, THE GENTLEMEN OF THE BRITISH FACTORY AT ALEPPO, AND THOSE NOW IN ENGLAND WHO HAVE FORMERLY RESIDED AT THAT PLACE, THE FOLLOWING SHEETS ARE, WITH THE DEEPEST SENSE OF GRATITUDE AND ESTEEM, INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR. _Advertisement._ The Author’s intention, when he first began to digest his materials, was only to exhibit an account of the epidemic diseases at _Aleppo_, particularly of the plague, which raged three years in that city during his residence therein. A long and extensive practice among all ranks and degrees of people, had furnished him with the means of being perfectly well acquainted with the customs and manners of the inhabitants. The neighbourhood of this place, its site, and natural productions, he found had not been so fully described, but that there still was room left for improvement. Instead, therefore, of confining himself singly to so much of the general history of the place as might be sufficient for the purpose of his profession, he has entered into the subject more at large, and has endeavoured to present the reader with a succinct, but at the same time an exact account of such things relative thereto as seemed most to merit attention. It must however be remembered that his observations are confined to one city, and its environs only. Other places, and those too at no great distance, may have other customs; and to this it may be ascribed, that different writers on the head of the customs of eastern nations present us with very different accounts. When it is considered that the Author resided many years abroad, and conversed daily in other languages more than in his own, which he had but little leisure to cultivate, the defects in his stile, it is hoped, will be forgiven.