The lepers were, as a rule, idle, insolent and insubordinate, and knowing the incurable nature of their disease reckless and desperate to a degree. Half-castes, Malays, especially those whose morality was below the average, or those whose diet was, as a rule, confined almost exclusively to fish, I was told were more susceptible to the disease than Europeans. On making inquiries I learned many horrible facts. Among others I found the bath-room and the kitchen to be identical, one place only being provided for them in which to live, eat, drink and sleep, the “wash” or refuse and almost certainly contaminated food actually being used to feed the pigs and poultry, and, “Horror on horror’s head” the miserable sufferers themselves could be seen rolling about in squalid filth, their clothes soaked and besmeared with the discharges from their festering sores. No one seemed to have power or inclination to manage them; neglected and forsaken, they were left to the charge of fellow lepers as helpless as themselves, Horace’s “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” never having a better exemplification. Dr. Wynne, the assistant medical officer in charge, who has had considerable experience of this disease in Bulgaria and Constantinople, although not noticing among the common fowls the tender-footedness, bowing of the legs, incurvated claws, and the nodular articulations which are the earliest symptoms of the disease in animals, yet distinctly stated in evidence before a select committee of the house of assembly in 1883 that he had come across pigeons, mice, pheasants and turkeys unmistakably suffering from leprosy; and he further remarked at the time that “the communicableness of this disease to animals is a matter of great importance, for the reason that it may also be communicable to human beings through the agency of animals suffering from the disease being used as food.”