THE ARABIAN LEPROSY (KOOSTUM).
Happily this dreadful disease is not as common as the other forms of leprosy: but once I beheld a dreadful specimen of its virulence; going into the verandah at 7 A.M., where the carpenters were all at work, a close and most disagreeable effluvium annoyed me—the cause could not be discovered.
Just beyond, in the garden, lay a lump under a black blanket. “What is this?” said Lutchman, the carpenter, “the smell proceeds from this lump.” He raised the blanket, beneath it was a leper. Lutchman desired the man to quit the grounds. The poor wretch held up his hands and showed his feet; the fingers and toes of which were festering and rotten from the black Arabian leprosy!
I desired he might be carried to the hospital. “We will not touch him,” said the servants; “let him go to the leper hospital.” I sent the man a rupee. “What is the use of a rupee?” said Lutchman, “he cannot enter the bazār; how can he change it?” I sent him some copper coins. “Perhaps some one of low caste will bring him food and take the ānās,” said the carpenter. The poor wretch raised himself, made salām for the money, and crawled away on his knees and elbows.
The next day he was found dead in a field: some of the copper coins had been expended, the remainder and the rupee were on his person.
The man had come up from Calcutta on a boat, had been put ashore under our garden bank, and had crawled up; he had not a cowrie. “There was not even left a sigh in his heart[77].”
He was totally destitute: but of this I was ignorant, until the next day. The effluvium was so bad, and the danger of infection so fearful, it was necessary to remove him at once from the garden.
There is a pink leprosy very common: I have often seen a man—once I saw two men—bathing amongst a multitude of men and women, their skins were pink, like the pink of salmon; the disease is not catching, I understand, and they are not avoided.
Another leprosy shows itself in white spots on their dark skins. I was practising archery one morning early; suddenly from behind a tree, a woman came to me, and throwing herself on the ground, laid hold of my foot with both hands, and bent her head upon it; saying, “Mercy, mercy, Beebee Sāhiba!” “May you bathe in milk, and be fruitful in children[78]!” A gentleman present caught me by the shoulder, and pulled me back, at the same time speaking angrily to the woman. “Do you not see,” said he, “she is a leper? She is covered with spots, come away, I am very sorry she touched you.” I gave her some ānās, and told her to go to the hospital—one established by the contributions of the gentlemen at the station, and supported by subscription. There is, also, an asylum for the blind, supported in the same manner.
If I remember correctly, in the course of six weeks after the opening of the Leper Hospital, it contained sixty patients. I have often walked my horse round the compound, during my morning ride, to look at the poor creatures.
The elephantiasis, called by the natives fīl-paī, from fīl, an elephant, and paī a foot, is sometimes seen in the Up Country, but is not as common as in Bengal; perhaps the chapāties, thin cakes of unleavened bread which the natives here eat, conduce more to health than rice, the principal food in Bengal. However that may be, it is certain so many miserable objects are not to be seen here afflicted with fīl-paī, as in that low, marshy, and swampy country.
Divine service is performed at Allahabad, either in the Fort or at the Circuit Bungalow, the resident families being unable amongst themselves to raise a sum sufficient to build a handsome church: nevertheless they are the most liberal contributors to all charitable institutions.