An Accursed Race

An Accursed Race

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4.5
(2 Reviews)
An Accursed Race by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

Published:

1855

Pages:

21

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2,090

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An Accursed Race

By

4.5
(2 Reviews)

Book Excerpt

r belief, have become poisonous.

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

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An intriguing, almost unbelievable essay on the prejudices in Spain and France against a group of people called Cagots. They didn't look different, speak a separate language, or believe a different religion. Nothing distinguished them from Spaniards or Frenchmen except they were known as Cagots.
They were tracked, forbidden to own land or intermarry, carried an invisible leprosy, withered grass by walking on it, and poisoned streams and fountains by drinking from them.
A fine account of the stupidity human beings are capable of.
Interesting book about a long line of families, of people who were shunned and treated as outcasts. No solid evidence explains why they were outcasts except there name "Cagot" and possibly very early christian converts.