And all this time, there was nothing remarkable or disgusting in the
outward appearance of this unfortunate people. There was nothing about
them to countenance the idea of their being lepers--the most natural mode
of accounting for the abhorrence in which they were held. They were
repeatedly examined by learned doctors, whose experiments, although
singular and rude, appear to have been made in a spirit of humanity. For
instance, the surgeons of the king of Navarre, in sixteen hundred, bled
twenty-two Cagots, in order to examine and analyze their blood. They
were young and healthy people of both sexes; and the doctors seem to have
expected that they should have been able to extract some new kind of salt
from their blood which might account for the wonderful heat of their
bodies. But their blood was just like that of other people. Some of
these medical men have left us a description of the general appearance of
this unfortunate race, at a time when they were more numerous and less
intermixed than they are now. The families existing in the south and
west of France, who are reputed to be of Cagot descent at this day, are,
like their ancestors, tall, largely made, and powerful in frame; fair and
ruddy in complexion, with gray-blue eyes, in which some observers see a
pensive heaviness of look.
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