The most prevailing diseases in this country that have come under my observation, are, cutaneous disorders of all kinds, intermittent fevers, those of a putrid, malignant, pestilential kind, and the puerperal fever, which proceeds from the barbarous treatment of lying-in women in this country, as they are kept in small confined rooms, deprived of the benefit of pure air.

One day I went to see a very fine young woman, the lady of one of the Xeriffes.  The heat of the room was intolerable.  After much persuasion, I succeeded in having her removed to a cooler one, and she recovered, contrary to the predictions of the female attendant, who reported the daily changes to a celebrated doctor here.  It is wonderful what numbers of young women fall victims to this fever in the course of a year.

Besides the above-mentioned complaints, I have observed insanity, epilepsy, spasmodic affections of the face, ruptures of all kinds (which last are produced by their loose kind of trowsers); nervous consumptions, extreme debility, and dropsy, brought on by their indolent manner of living, and the great abuses of violent doses of drastic medicines.

The principal and opulent inhabitants of this country, in order to excite certain desires, are frequently in the habit of receiving, from their own doctors, several strong and powerful stimulants, to the infallible detriment and ultimate, destruction of their constitutions.  I have been at great pains to deter them from these abominable habits, by representing to them their ill effects and fatal consequences; but as they all appear to have a great propensity for a short life and a merry one, I fear my advice has been thrown away, for I have daily the most pressing and importunate solicitations from all classes of people, both young and old, to give them the medicines I have alluded to:—­but 1 must here be clearly understood, that debauchery which exists in all the principal towns of this country in a superlative degree, does not extend to the inland and mountainous parts, where the morals are pure, and the people remarkably healthy, strong, and robust, living to a very advanced age, and scarcely ever afflicted with any disease excepting cutaneous disorders, to which they are very subject.  The great abuse of blood-letting on all trifling occasions, practised by the rich inhabitants, produces very bad effects.

There is a well in the neighbourhood of this town, which possesses a great many medicinal virtues; and though I have not been able to ascertain its mineral qualities, I have found, by using the water, that it is extremely friendly to the stomach, that it excites appetite and digestion, and lively spirits; that it is efficacious in the cure of gravel and nephritic complaints; and in cases of foulness of the blood, I have found it superior to any mineral waters I have met with in Europe.  It has completely cured my Jew servant of a most inveterate scurvy, under which he had laboured for a very considerable time.