ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 137 



these days at least ; but I have an old Historical Magazine 

 for 1790, which says, taking its facts and quoting from 

 Hutchinson's History, etc., of Durham : — 



' The leprosy was much more common in this part of the globe 

 formerly than at present, and, perhaps, near half the hospitals 

 that were in England were for lepers. At the five gates of 

 Norwich were five houses of this sort; and lepers were so 

 numerous in the twelfth century that by a decree in the Lateran 

 Council, under Pope Alexander in., 1179, they were empowered 

 to erect churches for themselves and to have ministers (lepers, we 

 may suppose) to officiate in them. This shows at once how 

 infectious and offensive their distemper was ; and on this account 

 in England, " where a man was a leper, and dwelling in a town, 

 and would come into the church, or among his neighbours, where 

 they have assembled, to talk with them to their annoyance or 

 disturbance, a writ lay de leproso amovendo." 



' What follows is remarkable. The writ is for those lepers who 

 appear in the sight of all men that they are lepers, by their voice 

 and sores, the putrefaction of their flesh, and by the smell of 

 them. And so late as the reign of Edward the Sixth multitudes 

 of lepers seem to have been in England ; for in 1 Edward VI. c. 3, 

 in which directions are given for carrying the poor to the places 

 where they were born, etc., we read the following clause : — 

 "Provided always that all leprous and poor bed-rid creatures may, 

 at their liberty, remain and continue in such houses appointed for 

 lepers or bed-rid people as they now lie in." ' 



The leprosy from which we were all rescued that day 

 was the kind which eats the flesh and corrodes the bones ; 

 creeping on gradually, not to be arrested till the poor body 

 becomes one running sore from head to foot, drying off, 

 and sloughing away till no flesh remains but what hangs 

 in shreds. Hair, teeth, nails, and every feature gone, with 

 no semblance of a face left, the victim yet lives on, often 

 for years ; not always suffering, but abhorrent to himself 

 and to all others save a self -chosen band, who may truly be 

 numbered among the ' noble army of martyrs.' 



Such a leper we once saw from the window of a very slow- 

 moving train. A man was passing along, not far off, 



