TO THE COURT OF AYA. 435 
was a girl of fourteen years of age, and that she 
had been a martyr to it ever since. Leprosy, 
according to the Burmans, is not contagious, 
but, in rare cases, may be communicated by 
actual contact. Even this much, however, is 
probably not correct; for sound children may 
be seen at the breast of leprous women, and we 
ourselves saw abundant examples of sound wo¬ 
men married to leprous husbands, and sound 
children the offspring of leprous parents. We 
were particularly struck by seeing one little girl 
about three years of age, in perfect health, cling¬ 
ing close to her father, who was begging by the 
road-side, and who was a great martyr to the 
disorder. That the complaint, however, is fre¬ 
quently hereditary, and may be communicated 
by parents to their offspring, seems to be gene¬ 
rally admitted. Like scrofula and gout, how¬ 
ever, it is said to disappear for one or two gene¬ 
rations, and to break out in the third or fourth. 
Like these also, it affects some members of a 
family, and not others. The disorder, although 
generally incurable, is not always so : we saw 
several persons in the village above-mentioned, 
who, by their own account, had recovered from 
it, and upon whose persons its scars were still 
visible. 
It would be difficult, I imagine, to trace this 
2 F 2 
