148 VOYAGE FROM INDIA TO SIAM AND MALACCA. 



and my task was the easier as he himself has studied medicine in 

 Paris. At this occasion he promised to give me a compendium 

 of a grammar of the Siamese language. 



AVhen I came home, I heard that there was a female 

 monstrosity to be seen in the Portuguese fort. This woman had 

 formerly lived in Inthia, but now she had grown poor, and was 

 obliged to beg for alms in the country, but by order of the king 

 she had been brought hither. She was about forty years of 

 age, or medium height, her feet were smooth and well 

 proportioned. All the rest of her body was covered with smaller 

 or larger waits, they were densest near the nipple of her left 

 breast. The head was extraordinarily big, the left side of her 

 forehead was only covered with small warts, and the eye on this 

 side was perfectly sound, only very large, th§ cheek, the mouth, and 

 the jaw, on this side were quite normal, only proportionately 

 large. At the right side there was a fleshy growth, beginning 

 at the crown of her head, covering half her forehead and the 

 whole place were the eye ought to have been ; the fleshy growth 

 even increased at this place, and covered half the nose, and there 

 was no callus to be felt, and even on the left side the nose seemed 

 to be quite flat and had no callus either, but only the partition of 

 the nose, which formed a natural opening at the left side. There 

 was a wide Hat furrow, running along the right side, which divid- 

 ed the fleshy g^rowth, and about two inches from the nose was a 

 wide opening, into which one mig'ht have inserted two fingers, 

 out of which flowed a white mucous slime. The left corner of 

 her mouth was, as I said before, normal, only by the constant 

 use of only the one side it was somewhat lengthened at the upper 

 part. At a little distance from the left corner of the mouth a 

 hanging sort of growth ran along the lips and these lost their 

 shape completely, they grew flatter, and ended in a small white 

 strip, which was also moistened with saliva. The whole gTowth 

 forms a sort of fiat swelling, from the crown of the head to the 

 shoulder ; from there it hung down, so that no jaw could be 

 distinguished ; at the neck it was also loose, and hung down, like 

 a wrinkly rag, about two inches thick. In the place of the nostrils 

 there w^as a furrow, and lower down under the navel this 

 growth was divided in two lobes ; it grew a little thinner but 

 kept the same width. The inner lobe hung down as far as the 

 middle of the thigh, where it diminished m width, but increased 



