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News from Nowhere, or, an Epoch of Rest : being some chapters from a utopian romance by William Morris
page 49 of 269 (18%)
produced such ugly children if their disease was not treated sharply,
that the neighbours couldn't stand it. However, I'm happy to say
that all that is gone by now; the disease is either extinct, or
exists in such a mild form that a short course of aperient medicine
carries it off. It is sometimes called the Blue-devils now, or the
Mulleygrubs. Queer names, ain't they?"

"Yes," said I, pondering much. But the old man broke in:

"Yes, all that is true, neighbour; and I have seen some of those poor
women grown old. But my father used to know some of them when they
were young; and he said that they were as little like young women as
might be: they had hands like bunches of skewers, and wretched
little arms like sticks; and waists like hour-glasses, and thin lips
and peaked noses and pale cheeks; and they were always pretending to
be offended at anything you said or did to them. No wonder they bore
ugly children, for no one except men like them could be in love with
them--poor things!"

He stopped, and seemed to be musing on his past life, and then said:

"And do you know, neighbours, that once on a time people were still
anxious about that disease of Idleness: at one time we gave
ourselves a great deal of trouble in trying to cure people of it.
Have you not read any of the medical books on the subject?"

"No," said I; for the old man was speaking to me.

"Well," said he, "it was thought at the time that it was the survival
of the old mediaeval disease of leprosy: it seems it was very
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