eemed injudicious to run the hazard
of being charged with unnecessary repetition.--E.]

Among people whose food is so simple, and who in general are seldom
drunk, it is scarcely necessary to say, that there are but few diseases;
we saw no critical disease during our stay upon the island, and but few
instances of sickness, which were accidental fits of the cholic. The
natives, however, are afflicted with the erysipelas, and cutaneous
eruptions of the scaly kind, very nearly approaching to a leprosy. Those
in whom this distemper was far advanced, lived in a state of seclusion
from all society, each in a small house built upon some unfrequented
spot, where they were supplied with provisions: But whether they had any
hope of relief, or languished out the remainder of their lives in
solitude and despair, we could not learn. We observed also a few who had
ulcers upon different parts of their bodies, some of which had a very
virulent appearance; yet they seemed not much to be regarded by those
who were afflicted with them, for they were left entirely without
application even to keep off the flies.[26]

[Footnote 26: The affection of the skin, called leprosy in the text, is,
in the missionary account, ascribed to the excessive use of the _yava_,
the intoxicating beverage of the Otaheitans, and is there said to be
regarded by many as a _badge of nobility_. This perhaps is something on
the same principle as the gout is accounted among us, an evidence of a
person's being rich; for it appears, that the common people in general
are as unable to procure the yava in Otaheite, as they are on our side
of the world to indulge in luxurious living. What excellency there is in
the scabbed skins of the Otaheitan lepers, to entitle them to the
estimation of nobility, or what advantage they find in this to
compensate the sufferings of so grievous a malady, is difficult indeed
to divine; but it may be very safely affirmed of those among us, who
have prospered so well as to obtain the gout for a possession, that they
really require all the comforts of riches, though tenfold more than
imagined, to render the residue of life any way tolerable. Yet such is
the inconsistency of human nature, and so formidable its weakness of
resolution, when pernicious habits are once formed, that few persons,
though even writhing at the bare remembrance of its horrors, and
dreading its approach as the attack of

Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things,