136 ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 



glory — to begin with ; but F. said there must not be a hint 

 of such a thing. That they would not go unrewarded he 

 knew ; the Government would see to it ; then, with per- 

 mission, we might add our personal gifts to show our 

 gratitude. And so it came about. 



What first led the authorities to suspect the source of 

 the vaccine for our division I do not know, but their action 

 showed that they were on the alert, and thus a widespread 

 calamity was averted. Subsequent investigation proved 

 to the hilt that that village was a forcing-bed of leprosy 

 in an awful form, but it was not allowed to exist as one 

 much longer. The dwellings were burnt, all the animals 

 were destroyed, and every person affected — strange to say, 

 some were not — was deported to one of the leper establish- 

 ments, of which there are several scattered up and down 

 India. The neighbouring villages were strictly searched, 

 but as they had held no communication with the one where 

 leprosy was rife, no signs of it were found in them. At the 

 same time, we wondered at the callousness or philosophy 

 with which the people endured such proximity. As in 

 regard to the crocodiles of Poolpadi, it was evidently 

 familiarity that had engendered contempt. It is the same 

 with those who can calmly dwell on the slopes of a volcano, 

 ignoring the danger. 



Leprosy has been conserved by generations of unchecked 

 transmission ; its primary cause is bad water, that mother 

 of many kindred ills, including elephantiasis and the guinea- 

 worm, of which more anon. It was common enough, at 

 any rate, on the west coast, which was the part of India 

 best known to us. 



It is still a question whether leprosy be infectious or not ; 

 contagious it certainly is, and also hereditary. I have been 

 told that it is allied to tuberculosis, yet while the latter 

 is freely spoken of and written about in England, no word 

 is ever breathed there of the former, as far as I know. In 



