“More uncommon is taˊɪrg̣ɪn, a peculiar disease that increases the pigment in the skin, so that the afflicted look like mulattoes. They do not complain of any pain, but lose in strength and agility; nor can they endure the hardships of their former pursuits, though their term of life does not seem to be shortened. I met with only five cases of this disease” (1-064).

Identification: Addison's disease, adrenal insufficiency as a sequela of tuberculosis — which is what caused most of it in this period, and which the region had. Generalised hyperpigmentation with weakness and lost stamina, and no pain, is the syndrome. The one thing on the page that resists the reading is Bogoras's last clause: untreated Addison's shortens life, and he says these lives were not shortened.

The name is not a vaˊɪrg̣ɪn compound the way Syphilis's is — it shares only the nominalising ending — and nothing here claims it is. Kalêˊlɪ-taˊɪrg̣ɪn, which the book files under this name, runs the other way and removes pigment; whether taˊɪrg̣ɪn is one disease or a native category for a disturbance of skin colour in either direction is not settled by these pages.