Читать книгу The Harim and the Purdah: Studies of Oriental Women онлайн

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A WOMAN OF THE MASSES.

To face p. ssss1.

The women in general are very ignorant in regard to all sanitary laws, and there is an enormous amount of preventable sickness within the harims. Children are allowed to eat what and whenever they wish, and sweets are indulged in at all times. All babies suffer from eye trouble, mainly caused by uncleanliness. A baby is not washed for eight days after birth, then if the father or mother is suffering from any form of skin disease, it is considered fatal to put water on the child. Flies and mosquitoes abound, carrying contagion to all. Doctors are unknown amongst the poorer class, and the mothers are in the hands of unskilled midwives at the time of child-bearing, and the mortality is great.

When the angel of death enters the household of an Egyptian, it may be known by the wailing of the women. The custom of weeping and wailing, beating of the breasts, and tearing out of the hair still prevails on the death of the member of a family. The body is buried within twenty-four hours. It is enclosed in a coffin which is covered by a rich shawl or piece of embroidery and carried to the cemetery on the shoulders of men, preceded by blind men chanting the Koran and followed by friends and relatives. The same ceremony is observed for the women as for the men.