456 Voyage of the Novara. 



Lichen, Scabies, Psoriasis, and Syphilis. Common as the dis- 

 ease is in Southern China, it is unknown in the North ; its 

 area of manifestation seems to be confined within the tropics. 

 It is, however, related of many Chinese in good circum- 

 stances, that when attacked by leprosy they have removed to 

 Pekin, where after a two years' residence they have lost all 

 trace of the infection, which, however, broke out anew im- 

 mediately on their return to the South. 



Leprosy does not seem by its physical effects to shorten 

 life. There are in China numbers of aged people attacked 

 with this disease, and in the Lazar-house at Canton there is 

 still living an old leper upwards of eighty, who has long 

 found an asylum in that hospital as an incurable. Suicide is 

 not uncommon among those thus sorely smitten, when they 

 usually poison themselves with an over-dose of opium, hang 

 themselves, or drown themselves, for death, they say, makes 

 them once more clean. Although the Chinese believe in the 

 hereditary transmission of leprosy, they nevertheless think 

 that the disease becomes of a milder t}^e in the third gener- 

 ation, and entirely disappears in the fourth. Marriages never 

 take place with the offspring of leprous parents or grand- 

 parents, but on the other hand the lepers and their children 

 intermarry among themselves. A leper however of the fourth 

 generation would only ally himself with a girl of the same 

 degree of exemption. The children of such a union would 

 be considered sound and free from leprosy, and would 

 no longer be excluded in any way from social rights. 



