On the other hand, if the Egyptian climate is thus
powerfully preventive and curative of many of our most
serious European maladies. Clot Bey enumerates no
inconsiderable list of endemic disorders from which our
colder latitudes are mostly or wholly free. Amongst
these, plague formerly enjoyed the bad pre-eminence;
but of this terrible scourge, which used to break out ^■pi-
demically at nearly regular intervals of six, eight, or ten
years, there has happily been no visitation for more than
fifty years — partly, perhaps, because of the stricter quar-
antine enforced against Barbary and the Hedjaz, where it
is also endemic, and in both of which it has appeared
more than once during that period. From the Pharaohs
to the Viceroys, however, the plague has been one of the
strictly native maladies of Egypt ; its inducing cause and
its treatment have alike baffled medical skill, and it may
be doubted if mere hygienic reforms will ever perma-
nently eradicate it. Of the commonly prevalent dis-
orders, opMTialmia is the most general and constant, with
the result that the population of Egypt offers probably a
larger proportion of whoUy or haK blind than that of any

* Egypt an a Healtli Resort, pp. u9, 70, 90.
848 EGYPT AS IT 18.
