VOYAGE FROM INDIA TO SI AM AND MALACCA. 117 



Palliote ; the inmates live about half a man's height above the 

 ground; it is small, and only has lig-ht from the north 

 east, at which side the building is open. The side looking- to- 

 wards the sea is closed. Beside this building they have still a 

 sort of shed, which stands on poles; in it they prepare their 

 food. The inmates at this moment are only twelve in number, 

 all of them being native Portuguese, Malays, and Chinese, of both 

 sexes. Among them was a boy of 16 years, who was quite 

 merry. 



I tried to find out what remedies were used, but the doctor 

 could not tell me more about them than that they went to town 

 from time to time to fetch different things with which they 

 bathed the ulcerated parts. The intention of curing these miser- 

 able beings was not combined with this hospital. 



I felt the pulse of some of them, and could find nothing 

 remarkable ; in the worst cases it was slow and weak. The skin 

 in the healthy places was soft and moist. I inquired into their 

 taste, tongue, sleep, and pains, all was as in a healthy state, 

 only when a part w^as falling off they felt pain, but they 

 had no pain in their extremities, which are really the seat of the 

 illness. Their lungs were prefectly free and I could detect no 

 vestige of hoarseness as in the case of the Kakerlacka and the 

 Iceland lepers. 



This kind of illness consists of a sort of shrinking of their 

 fingers and toes. The fingers and hands begin to dry c>ut, they 

 are quite stiff and insensible, so that they can even touch fire 

 without feeling any pain. After this state appears a small inflam- 

 ation and a malignant matter detaches the joints by degrees. 

 At the feet there is generally an odoematous swelling to be 

 observed ; the nails produce a malignant moisture and the limbs 

 fall off with much matter. 



Here, like elsewhere, the belief is general that the illness 

 is contagious, but none of the present immates had caught it in 

 that manner. The doctor had indeed lost his teeth and only a 

 few still remained and stood out like those of a squirrel, but he 

 assured me that there was not a sign of leprosy in his whole 

 body, though he had spent the greatest part of his life in this 

 hospital. 



It is more likely that this disease is produced by taking 

 indigestible and unnatural food, as many kinds of tortoise shells, 



