be deemed an argument rather against Sonnini’s hypothesis, than
in favour of it; while it has a greater tendency to prove, perhaps,
that the climate is not unfavourable to health; and this the constant
disappearance of the contagion at midsummer, after which,
it is said, no one has ever been known to die of the disorder,
strongly confirms.
The once ready admission of conjectures, if they had the appearance
of being founded on fact, to account for natural phenomena,
the- causes of which were not investigated, may explain the
reason of this serious charge brought against a country, that by no
means deserved the imputation. W ith the true cause of the plague“
we are unacquainted: but it was found to occur in Egypt; it was
a fact, that the land was covered with water, which became stagnant,
evaporated, and left it’s heterogeneous sediment on the moist
surface, to be dried up by the heat of the Sun; it was supposed,
that noisome miasmata, of sufficient virulence to engender thé
plague, must be exhaled by this putrefying sediment; and accordingly
to this the disease was attributed, so that Egypt was supposed
to be the place of it’s birth. But in this there is far too
much of gratuitous supposition. The evaporation is carried on too
quickly, to leave much matter for putrefaction; while the pure dry
air of the climate, and the salubrious northern gales, which blow
with considerable steadiness and force for the greater part of the
year, permit no noxious vapour, that has once arisen, to descend
again, or hover over the land, and infect the atmosphere. From
the numbers of fishes left by the retiring waters, and the multitudes
of frogs, that are annually produced, the generation of a vast
load of putrid animal matter might be apprehended: but happily
this is prevented by the numerous flocks of birds, which assemble
round the contracting waters, and greedily devour the frogs and
fishes, so that few are left behind. Who sees not here the wisdom
of Providence, which, acting through the means 7 7 o o of second causes,
has averted an impending evil, and given multitudes of living
creatures to find the support of their existence in what would
otherwise, probably have been fatal to man? From this view, which
agrees-with the fact of the salubrity of the climate, the sediment
of the Nile seems.capable of little injury to health; though, even
were it such a putrid mass, as men at a distance in their closets
have supposed, there is no reason to imagine, that it would be
capable of generating the plague.
I t is not to be expected, that in this country man should be
exempt from diseases, to which he is more or less a prey in every
part of the globe; but it would certainly be unjust, to-brand it
with the epithet of unhealthy; and Sonnini appeals confidently to
experience, to attest the purity and salubrity of it’s . air, which is
equally asserted by Mr. Antes, who resided in the country twelve
years.1 Possibly the dryness of it’s atmosphere, of which striking
instances occur in the sandy parts, and the regularity of it’s seasons,
counteract the sickeninog effects of sloth,7 and of the staognant
waters of the Nile. The diseases, that prevail here to a degree
unknown perhaps in any other country, are the elephantiasis, or
leprosy of the arabs, as it has been called, and inflammations of
the e y e s -. These affections of the eyes are particularly frequent
and severe, often occasioning the loss of one or both of these or