“This disease is found by experiment to be very infectious, and seems also to run in blood, most people that have taken it without infection from another having been related to three families in the isle. It affects any age or sex, and it is observed that young persons bear it longer than those of a more advanced age, some having lived ten years under it, others only two, some four, some six, etc., but none ever recover after the symptoms above-written do appear. The persons that fall into this direful case are, as soon as it is observed, obliged to retire to a solitary little hut, built on purpose for them, at a distance from all houses, and are not allowed any converse with their husbands, wives, or nearest relations, but have their necessaries of life furnished them by a contribution from all the inhabitants of the isle, and brought to their hut, which they take in when the person who brought it has retired to the windward of their house at some distance. “There has never been any cure of this disease attempted here, save that a few years ago a young woman in a neighbouring parish had some bolusses of mercury given her in order to a salivation; but some dangerous symptoms appearing, the administrator thought fit to proceed no further, and the patient continues still alive in the same case she was before taking the mercury.” In the voluminous MS. Medical Notes, bequeathed by Sir John Pringle to the College of Physicians of Edinburgh,[202] I find a copy of the above account of the Papa lepers. Sir Andrew Mitchell of Westshore seems to have transmitted the account to him without giving any notice of the writer of it. It is entered in Sir John’s notes under the date of 1759; but it was without doubt drawn up many years previously. I have already alluded to an entry in the Session Records of Walls, regarding the disappearance of leprosy from that parish and district in 1742. The entry seems to have been made at a sitting of the session “at North-house in Papastour;” and its expressions[203] show that at the date of it (17th March 1742) there were no lepers in Papa. From the MS. extracts furnished to me by Mr. Rannie, session-clerk, it appears that there is only mention of one other instance afterwards in the Session-books of the parish, viz. in December 1772 and 1776. The female who was the subject of it, and whose case is represented in the records as “singularly clamant,” was ordered to be provided, at the expense of the session, “with back and bed clothes, a house fit for her to lodge in, and maintenance to be brought to her daily at the house.” Mr. Rannie further states, “I have been informed by old persons that she lived but a short time after she was put into the house built for her in the common, at a distance from other houses.” He adds, “It has been reported to me that in Papa, about the year 1778, a leprous woman was put out and died in the fields before a house could be built; and that about the