As I took their photographs, most tried to hide their hands and feet, embarrassed to show what remained of their diseased fingers and toes. Some had neither hands nor feet, but only stubs at the ends of their arms and legs. In the most advanced cases, the dreaded disease had infected their eyes and mouths, resulting in grotesque facial disfigurations. I was visiting, illegally, a remote and isolated mountaintop community in Yunnan Province, China, where about thirty men and women afflicted with leprosy are hidden from the rest of the world.