sand feet, a disease frequently becomes epidemic with most of the characteristics,and all the fatality of plague, and known there by the name of Mahamurry, or the Great Mortality. As soon as the disease manifests itself, the people leave the place, and take up their temporary abode a considerable distance from the infected village; the dead are left unburied where they fall, the sick deserted where they lie, nor do the survivors venture back to their homes for months and years, when decomposition and time is supposed to have purified the infected spot. So strong is their conviction of the Mahamurry being contagious, that acordon is immediately made round a community suffering from the disease, and if one of their number were to venture beyond the boundary, he would be stoned to death.
10. PREDISPOSING CAUSES OF DISEASE.—A sound mind in a sound body,has long been known to be the best prophylactic against disease; a man in good health and of a cheerful train of mind, may be many times exposed to contagion or malaria with impunity, whereas one labouring under any bodily ailment, or depressing passion, is very liable to catch infection. Hence poor diet, bad water, scanty clothing, wretched houses, famine, fatigue, misfortune, melancholy, prepare the body for the seeds of fever; and the weak and inanimate are more frequently its victims than the
