'GAZETTEER OF PERSIA. VOLUME II' [‎37r] (78/706)

AZARBAIJAN
61
any other, especially among the young of both sexes. Stone in the bladder
is also frequent at all ages, especially among the males.
In the towns the men suffer most from indigestion, and the results of
sexual abuses and excesses. Heart disease is common. Lung diseases are
not particularly common, except during winter. Tuberculosis is certainly
less common than in Europe. The women suffer greatly from accidents
of child-birth, and the mal-practices of mammas or mid-wives ; all are
almost universally hysterical. Hysteria in one or other of its Protean
forms can nearly always be discovered. Headache is the most general
malady complained of and is most probably due to their sedentary
existence, and the abuse of the kalian. They also suffer greatly from
constipation and its attendant evils. The custom of early marriage has also
a most detrimental effect, and numbers of poor girls are completely ruined
during the first year of marriage.
In the country the men are decidedly more healthy and robust, their
principal ailment being rheumatism, due to exposure and damp houses.
In feverish districts they naturally suffer from ague, but this is not common
except in the Kara Dagh. The women, as a rule, are strong and healthy;
they work very hard and suffer much in the same way and of the same
complaints as the men, with the exception of the diseases consequent upon
child-birth and lactation. Diseases of the eye are frightfully common among
all classes, and skin diseases of the scalp are nearly universal.
Vaccination and inoculation are commonly practised ; inoculation being
most usual, especially outside the towns.
Population.
The inhabitants are, mainly, Turks, Kurds, and Armenians.
Turks. —The Turks are greatly in the ascendant, and are gradually
pushing out the Armenians, and in a lesser degree the Kurds. They be
long to the same race as the Turks on the north side of the Aras (now
Russian subjects), who occupy the valley from Julfa to Erivan, with whom
they are closely connected by history and marriage. They have taken the
place of those Armenians who previously peopled the country from Julfa
and Khoi to Mount Ararat, and will probably in course of time either deprive
the Kurds of their cultivable lands, or oblige them to settle down as cul
tivators of the soil. They are a hardy, brave race, and whether looked upon
as soldiers, of whom they furnish the most courageous, or as peasants, pure
and simple, they are among the best of Persian subjects. Mentally they
are not advanced, and offer a marked contrast to the Armenians, with whom
they are brought in contact. They are bigoted and easily led by their
spiritual guides, but socially a pleasant, if stupid people, easy to deal with
and manageable. On the western border they come into collision with
the Kurds, against whom they are fairly well able to hold their own. As
a rule, they are poor, the exactions of their rulers preventing the attainment of
any degree of comfort, notwithstanding their possession of rich soil, which
enables them to raise fine crops of wheat, barley, rice, and cotton. ’ Owing
to scarcity of timber, their dwelling places are miserable and their villages
wretched in appearance. A trait to be remarked upon is the change
visible in their attitude of mind. The happy philosophy, in which they have