HORN liXPUDITIOX—ANTHROPOLOGY. 
133 
into the Lake Eyre basin. To Queenslanders it is known as the “Lelyando S})ew” 
from the Belyando district where it is also a common complaint. 
The disease consists of painless attacks of vomiting, constantly recurring 
immediately after ingestion of food, followed by sensations of emptiness and 
hunger, renewed desire to eat and a repetition of the vomiting. 
If this inability to retain food upon the stomach continues, which it does for 
considerable periods, progressive emaciation takes place until the sullerer is 
reduced to the shadow of his former self. No one has yet, to my knowledge, 
thoroughly investigated the symptoms ajid the conditions which give rise to 
them, but they seem to depend largely upon the monotonous dietary of bush 
life which is most unnecessarily persisted in. My knowledge of the disease is 
only derived from the accounts of suflfei’ers, but it appears that, with change 
of residence and particularly change of diet, the symptoms quickly pass away. 
It is just possible, however, that actual contamination of the food by flies, if 
not the nauseous repugnance to it, induced by their constant presence in every dish, 
may have something to do with it. This may seem absurd, but those who have 
not been in Central Australia can scarcely realise what a plague of Hies really 
means. In less than a minute I have seen a joint of meat completely concealed 
from view by a covering of Hies an inch thick—a moving ma.ss, in fact, resembling 
a swarm of bees. A mouthful can scarcely be put into the mouth without carrying 
some with it, and hundreds find their way into the “pannikins” of tea. To the 
horses and camels they become perfect torments, and one frequently sees the edges 
of the eyelids of these animals completely raw from their persistent attacks. No 
statement that I have made is in any degree exaggerated when the plague is at 
its worst, and this is soon after rain, though I admit, that at other times, as indeed 
was the case during the greater part of the Horn ExpeditioJi, they are not nearly 
so troublesome. On a previous journey we encounted the plague in full force. 
A second condition, known by the term “ Barcoo Rot,” is one in which the 
slightest scratches or abrasions of the skin pass speedily into rapidly spreading, 
freely suppurating, yet superficial and often painless, circular ulcers, sometimes of 
extraordinary persistence. The sores in question nearly always affect the back 
of the hands, or, at all events, exposed parts of the arms; they may be multiple and 
may even apparently arise without any antecedent abrasion. On one occasion I 
have been myself aflected, and two or three of our party suffered severely on this 
Expedition. After healing, the ulcers leave for a long time a conspicuous but in 
my experience always mobile scar. 
