6. These leprous people lived thus easy, if I may be allowed the expression, for several years, even fifteen or twenty; for the disease begins insensibly, and shews itself but very slowly.
7. Antivenereal remedies, which were ordered for almost every patient we saw, were of no service: if they sometimes palliated some symptoms, they very often hastened the progress of the disease: besides, we never found the parts of generation at all infected, nor any thing, that looked like the pox about them.
8. Some of these people had indeed particular symptoms. In some the hair fell off; which was replaced by a finer kind: in others, worms were found in their ulcers: want of sleep, or frightful dreams, afflicted some; while others quite lost their voice, or it became effeminate like that of eunuchs; and others, we found, stunk extremely.
9. Almost all of them, being desirous of concealing their disorders, endeavored to deceive us, by alleging false excuses for the causes of their sores and ulcers: the greater part of them pretended, that the rats had eaten off their toes, and that burns had caused their ulcers. These were the figures, that every where presented to us.
10. We were confirmed in our opinions by experience, supported by verbal process, that this was the state of the diseased; that the distemper could neither be the pox, nor the effect of an inveterate one: that it had no symptom of that disease; but that it had every character of what the ancients called leprosy, elephantiasis, or such other names, as they were pleased to give it. So that we do not hesitate to pronounce, that those infected with this disease, as we have described it, ought to be treated as leprous persons, and subject to the ordinances, which his majesty was pleased to issue against such persons.
11. Again, we are well assured, from our observations, that the distemper is contagious, and hereditary; and yet the contagion is not so active, nor poisonous, as that of the plague, small-pox, nor even as the ring-worm, itch, scald, and other cutaneous disorders: for, if that were the case, the American colonies would be utterly destroyed; and these persons so infected, mixed as they are in every habitation, would have already infected all the Negroes, whom they come near.