Though to a new-comer the air feels dry, pure, and exhilarating, the city is a hot-bed of disease, and has been christened the "Fever Box." Small-pox, typhus, and typhoid are never absent, and every two or three years an epidemic of cholera breaks out and carries off a fearful percentage of the inhabitants.

In spring-time, during heavy rains, the plains are frequently inundated to a depth of two or three feet, and the water, stagnating and rotting under a blazing sun, produces towards nightfall a thick white mist, pregnant with miasma and the dreaded Shiraz fever which has proved fatal to so many Europeans, to say nothing of natives.

Medical science is at a very low ebb in Persia; purging and bleeding are the two remedies most resorted to by the native hakim.

If these fail, a dervish is called in, and writes out charms, or forms of prayer, on bits of paper, which are rolled up and swallowed like pills.

Inoculation is performed by placing the patient in the same bed as another suffering from virulent small-pox.