This Is The Whole Of The Moorish _Materia Medica_.
In
simple diseases, where little medical ability is necessary, and the
good habit of body of these people in general
Contributes to their
success, they may effect a cure; but in desperate cases, where nothing
but the skill of the physician can relieve oppressed nature, it is not
astonishing that they should fail. These men are in some measure
astrologers: most probably, being gifted with a greater degree of
cunning than their neighbours, they have discovered the weak side of
their countrymen, together with their own insufficiency, to cover
which they pretend to a knowledge of the stars, which has the greatest
weight with the superstitious Moors; consequently, when a patient,
either by their improper treatment, or the violence of his disease,
evinces symptoms of approaching dissolution, the doctor, with infinite
gravity, points out to the surrounding relations the star which, he
positively asserts, appears to summon the dying man to the bosom of
his Prophet. By this means he avoids reproach, since he has made it so
evident, that the poor man's time was come, and that nothing could
ward off the shafts of destiny. This apparently wonderful faculty of
prognostication, added to their exemplary mode of living, and liberal
donations to the poor and afflicted, operating upon the minds of the
blind and fanatic Moors, induces _them_ to consider their physicians
next to their saints, and to worship _them_ with nearly as much
reverence.
The Tweebs have each from two to six disciples, whom they instruct and
initiate in their secrets of the healing art.
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