DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.11638#0126
112
TRAVELS IN UPPER
tions*. Those diseases of inanimate things, which
served only to form the Jews to habits of cleanli-
ness, have disappeared from the East with the
dirty people for whom they were devised.
Men with red hair and beards are as uncommon
in the Levant as in Egypt. But this colour is
not an indication of leprosy, nor a reason to excite
suspicion of it, as some persons have imagined -f~.
It is not in the Levant, nor more particularly
in Egypt, they observe such precautions; since,
in the last of these countries, the lepers, what-
ever may be the nature of their malady, are
never sequestrated ; and that in the Levant they
never dream of sending them away, and of shut-
ting them up in enclosures without the cities, till
the moment when the leprosy is acknowledged,
and when it is evident to every beholder. On the
other hand, some Arabs of Egypt dye their beards
of a reddish colour, with the powder of henna, and
you can very well imagine that, if the idea of the
leprosy was inseparable from a beard of a red hue,
they would not wish to excite a belief that they
were attacked with a malady so repelling.
They know but little of the Arabs and the Egyp-
tians, who imagine, like Michaelis, after the opi-
" * Lev. chap. xiii. v, 47, et seq.
f Work already quoted, ques. xxviii.
hion
TRAVELS IN UPPER
tions*. Those diseases of inanimate things, which
served only to form the Jews to habits of cleanli-
ness, have disappeared from the East with the
dirty people for whom they were devised.
Men with red hair and beards are as uncommon
in the Levant as in Egypt. But this colour is
not an indication of leprosy, nor a reason to excite
suspicion of it, as some persons have imagined -f~.
It is not in the Levant, nor more particularly
in Egypt, they observe such precautions; since,
in the last of these countries, the lepers, what-
ever may be the nature of their malady, are
never sequestrated ; and that in the Levant they
never dream of sending them away, and of shut-
ting them up in enclosures without the cities, till
the moment when the leprosy is acknowledged,
and when it is evident to every beholder. On the
other hand, some Arabs of Egypt dye their beards
of a reddish colour, with the powder of henna, and
you can very well imagine that, if the idea of the
leprosy was inseparable from a beard of a red hue,
they would not wish to excite a belief that they
were attacked with a malady so repelling.
They know but little of the Arabs and the Egyp-
tians, who imagine, like Michaelis, after the opi-
" * Lev. chap. xiii. v, 47, et seq.
f Work already quoted, ques. xxviii.
hion