“After ‘Old Ninety-Nine’s’ cure, he continued to live at Shushan, making occasional trips to his cave, the whereabouts of which were sacredly guarded from discovery—indeed this document is so carefully worded as to give not a hint of its locality. While at Shushan, many years after having been cured, he had another revelation in the form of a dream. He must fly to his cave or evil spirits would obsess him for they were powerful, and after this sickness he might not be able to resist them.”
Here the doctor paused and looked searchingly at his listener but, seeing only an expression of interest on her face, went on,—“The old chief hastened to his cave, though not with the vigor of youth, only to find evil spirits in possession. Putting this document—which in reality is not a will—no Indian ever makes a will—with his other treasures into the chest he securely locked it and implored the Great Spirit to lead him to the Happy Hunting-ground. We can trace him no further, even the events last narrated are merely inferences from circumstances. We know that he went to the West Indies and I infer from collateral facts that he had a Spanish wife who suggested and formulated this document. His sudden and obscure death deprived her of any knowledge of the fact.” Dr. Herschel carefully folded the document and, leaning back in his chair, lit a cigar.
“Was he insane?” Eletheer asked.
“Insanity is a nice word to define. ‘Old Ninety-Nine’ was not insane, but died in an hysterical seizure. This would explain finding his body in that dangerous place.”
“Then he did not believe himself cured?” Eletheer said.
“Have you yet taken up the study of the nervous system?” Dr. Herschel asked, as though what had happened were an every-day occurrence.
“No, that comes in our second year.”
“One year on the nervous system! Ten years, a lifetime; and we are still in an unexplored realm.
“I wish particularly to point a moral in ‘Old Ninety-Nine’s’ case, as the symptoms there manifested will be among the most difficult to treat, particularly in the uneducated. First, because the word leprosy is crystalized in the human mind into an incurable disease and having once had it, a patient, unless of unusual intellect, lives in constant dread of its return—our hospitals for the insane would grow beautifully less by the elimination of that one element fear. Leprosy is a germ disease; the leper bacillus was discovered in 1874. Thus heredity is disproven. We know it to be a parasitic disease.”
“Then children of leprous parents cannot inherit the disease?”