Gorean Disease

Bazi Plague

Bazi plague is a deadly, rapidly spreading disease with no known cure. Its symptoms include pustules which appear all over the body, and a yellowing of the whites of the eyes.
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"The Physician would check the health of the crew and slaves, Plague some years ago had broken out in Bazi, to the North, which port had been closed by the merchants for two years. In some eighteen months it had burned itself out, moving south and eastward. Bazi had not yet recovered from the economic blow." .
"I with the crew members submitted to the examination of the Physician. He did little more than look into our eyes and examine our forearms. But our eyes were not yellowed nor was there sign of the broken pustules in our flesh." .
Explorers of Gor, page 117, 118.. "The girl looked at the Physician with horror, tears in her eyes. But he completed her examination, looking into her eyes and examining the interior of her thighs her belly and the interior of her forearms, for marks." .
Explorers of Gor, page 120..
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"She, as a slave knows that if she should contract the disease she would in all probability be summarily slain.".
Explorers of Gor page 134..
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"It is the plague! she cried. It is the Plague! I walked over to a mirror. I ran my tongue over my lips they seemed dry. The whites of my eyes clearly were yellow. I rolled up the sleeve of my tunic and saw there on the flesh of the forearm like black blisters open, erupted, a scattering of pustules." .
Explorers of Gor, page 135..
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"I knew that I had not been in a plague area. Too, the Bazi Plague had burned itself out years ago. No cases to my knowledge had been reported for months." .
Explorers of Gor, page 136..
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"I simply did not feel ill. I was slightly drunk and heated from the paga, but I did not believe myself fevered. My pulse and heartbeat, and respiration, seemed normal. I did not have difficulty catching my breath. I was neither dizzy nor nauseous, and my vision was clear. My worst physical symptoms were the irritation about my eyes and the genuinely nasty itchiness of my skin. I felt like tearing it off with my own fingernails." .
Explorers of Gor, page 136..
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"We are going to test you for pox, he said. The girl groaned. It was my hope that none on board the Clouds of Telnus had carried the pox. It is transmitted by the bites of lice. The pox had appeared in Bazi some four years ago. The port had been closed for two years by the merchants. It had burned itself out moving south and eastward in some eighteen months. Oddly enough some were immune to the pox, and with others it had only a temporary, debilitating effect. With others it was swift, lethal and horrifying. Those who had survived the pox would presumably live to procreate themselves, on the whole presumably transmitting their immunity to their offspring. Slaves who contracted the pox were often summarily slain. It was thought that the slaughter of slaves had had its role to play in the containment of the pox in the vacinity of Bazi." .
Slave Girl of Gor pg. 326 .

Dar-kosis

is a virulent, horrible, wasting disease and is similar in many ways to leprosy. Dar-kosis means Holy Disease and it is also known as the Sacred Affliction. The diseased are commonly known as Afflicted Ones. The Initiates feel Dar-kosis is an instrument of the Priest-Kings to punish those who displease them. The afflicted are holy to the Priest Kings and it is heresy to shed their blood though they can be stoned. It is highly contagious and the afflicted must wear yellow robes as a mark. Many victims also periodically clack a wooden device to warn people to stay away. Initiates have arranged Dar-Kosis pits where the Afflicted may voluntarily imprison themselves, to be fed with food dropped by men on tarns. Once in a Pit, an Afflicted is not permitted to leave. The Initiates would not let the Green Caste search for a cure. Some Physicians in Ar once tried to seek a cure, and were making good ground, when Initiates hired some men to destroy all of their research. After the Marlenus retook Ar, Flaminius was placed back in honor as a Physician and begun again to seek a cure. .

"Suddenly to my horror, I saw the quarry of the larl, It was a human being, moving with surprising alacrity over the rough ground. To my astonishment, I saw it wore the yellow cerements of the sufferer of Dar-Kosis, that virulent, incurable, wasting disease of Gor."
Tarnsman of Gor page 149

"I turned to regard the individual whose life I had saved. He was now bent and crooked, like a broken, blasted shrub in his yellow shroudlike robe. The hood concealed his face.
There are more of these about," I said. "You'd better come with me. It wont be safe here."
The figure seemed to shrink backward and grow smaller in its yellow rags. Pointing to its shadowed concealed face it whispered "The Holy Disease."
That was the literal translation of Dar-Kosis--the Holy Disease-- or, equivalently, the Sacred Affliction. The disease is named that because it is regarded as being holy to the Priest Kings, and those who suffer from it are regarded as consecrated to the Priest Kings. Accordingly, it is regarded as heresy to shed their blood. On the other hand, the Afflicted, as they are called, have little to fear from their fellow men. Their disease is so highly contagious, so invariably devastating in its effects, and so feared on the planet that even the boldest of outlaws gives them a wide berth. Accordingly, the afflicted enjoy a large amount of freedom of movement on Gor. They are of course, warned to stay away from the habitations of men, and if they approach too closely, they are sometimes stoned. Oddly enough, caustically, stoning the Afflicted is not regarded as a violation of the Priest Kings supposed injunction against shedding their blood.
As an act of charity, Initiates have arranged at various places Dar-Kosis pits where the Afflicted may voluntarily imprison themselves to be fed with food hurled downward from the backs of passing tarns. Once in a Dar-Kosis pit the Afflicted are not allowed to depart. Finding this poor fellow in the Voltai, so far from the natural routes and fertile areas of Gor, I suspected he might have escaped, if that was possible, from one of the pits.
"What is your name?" I asked.
"I am of the afflicted," said the weird, cringing figure. "The afflicted are dead. The dead are nameless." The voice was little more than a hoarse whisper.
I was glad that it was night and that the hood of the man was drawn, for I had no desire to look on what pieces of flesh might still cling to his skull."
Tarnsman of Gor page 149-151

"You seem to me, from what I have seen and heard," I(Kuurus/Tarl) said, "a skilled Physician."
He handed me the second cup, though I wore the black tunic.
"In the fourth and fifth year of the reign of Marlenus," said he, regarding me evenly, "I was first in my caste in Ar."
I took a swallow.
"Then," I said, "you discovered paga?"
"No," said he.
"A girl?" I asked.
"No, said Flaminius, smiling. "No," he took another swallow. "I thought to find," said he, "an immunization against Dar Kosis."
"Dar Kosis is incurable," I said.
"At one time," he said, "centuries ago, men of my Caste claimed age was incurable. Others did not accept this and continued to work. The result was the Stabilization Serums."
Dar-Kosis or the Holy Disease, or Sacred Affliction, is a virulent wasting disease of Gor. Those afflicted with it, commonly spoken of simply as the Afflicted Ones, may not enter into normal society. They wander the country side in shroudlike yellow rags, beating a wooden clapping device to warn men from their path; some of them volunteer to be placed in Dar-Kosis pits, several of which are in the vicinity of Ar, where they are fed and given drink, and are, of course, isolated; the disease is extremely contagious. Those who contract the disease are regarded by law as dead."
"Dar-Kosis," I said, "is thought to be holy to the Priest Kings, and those afflicted with it to be consecrated to Priest-Kings."
"A teaching of Initiates," said Flaminius, bitterly. "there is nothing holy about disease, about pain, about death." He took another drink.
"Dar-Kosis," I said, "is regarded as an instrument of Priest Kings, used to smite those who displease them."
"Another myth of the Initiates," said Flaminius, unpleasantly.
"But how do you know that?" I queried.
"I do not care," said Flaminius," if it is true or not. I am a Physician."
"What happened?" I asked.
"For many years," said Flaminius, "and this was even before 10,110, the year of Pa-Kur and his horde, I and others worked secretly in the Cylinder of Physicians. We devoted our time, those Ahn in the day in which we could work, to study, research, test and experiment. Unfortunately, for spite and for gold, word of our work was brought to the High Initiate, by a minor Physician discharged from our staff for incompetence. The Cylinder of Initiates demanded that the High Council of the Caste of Physicians put an end to our work, not only that it be discontinued but that our results to that date be destroyed. The Physicians, I am pleased to say stood with us. There is little love lost between Physicians and Initiates, even as is the case between Scribes and Initiates. The Cylinder if the High Initiates then petitioned the High Council of the city to stop our work, but they, on the recommendation of Marlenus, who was then Ubar, permitted our work to continue." Flaminius laughed. "I remember Marlenus speaking to the High Initiate. Marlenus told him that either the Priest Kings approved of our work or they did not; that if they approve, it should continue; if they did not approve, they themselves, as the Masters of Gor, would be quite powerful enough to put an end to it."
I laughed.
Flaminius looked at me curiously. "It is seldom that those of the black caste laugh."
"What happened then?"
Flaminius took another drink, and then he looked at me, bitterly." "Before the next passage hand," he said, "armed men broke into the Cylinder of Physicians; the floors we worked on were burned; the Cylinder itself was seriously damaged; our work, our records, the animals we used were all destroyed; several of my staff were slain, others driven away."
~~more written about Flaminius being beaten back when trying to save his work, getting burned, etc~~
"I had," he said, "shortly before the fire developed a strain of urts resistant to the Dar-Kosis organism; a serum cultured from their blood was injected in other animals, which subsequently we were unable to infect. It was tentative, only a beginning, but I had hoped--I had hoped very much"
~~more here now about how Flaminius hates men, realized that if they started again, the Initiates henchmen would return yet again with torches and destroy the work. So he works in the slavers house, with much gold and much paga.~~
"One more thing to this little story," said Flaminius. He lifted the bottle to me.
"What is that?" I asked.
"At the games on the second of En Kara in the Stadium of Blades," said he, "I saw the High Initiate Complicius Serenus."
"So?," said I.
"He does not know it," said Flaminius, "nor will he learn for perhaps a year learn."
"Learn what?," I asked.
Flaminius laughed and poured himself another drink. "That he is dying of Dar-Kosis," he said.
--Assassin of Gor page 265-269