ALEPPO BOIL

Aleppo boil: translation

[oriental sore]. Conditions in the Eastern Mediterranean were unfamiliar and hostile to ill-equipped European crusaders. The boil was the outward sign of a disease known to modern medicine as leishmaniasis. It was the consequence of a parasitic infection, with unpleasant symptoms of boils, ulcers and liver damage; it was frequently fatal (disease was a more effective killer of crusaders than the Saracens). Aleppo was in today's north Syria. Then it was an important garrison town of the Muslim forces.