IS LEPROSY CONTAGIOUS?

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3756, 30 July 1883, Page 4

IS LEPROSY CONTAGIOUS?

This question has just been unpleasantly raised in Philadelphia, in consequence of tho arrival of a wealthy planter from the Sandwich Islands, who has been a leper for eight years, and who has to tho American city for the purpose of placing himself under 11 physician there. This medical man has evolved a theory of his own about leprosy, to the effect that the disease is not contagious aud can only be communicated by inoculation. This theory is opposed to the vast bulk of medical opinion in all ages and in all climes. But the Philadelphia physician appears to have tho courage of his convictions, for ho has begun to make a tour with his patient through the United States, with the object of keeping up the general health and spirits of the afflicted man. The American press is not unnaturally discussing the question how far any physician is justified iv turning a man smitten with leprosy loose upon the community: for if ho should sow the seeds of this terrible disease wherever ho goes, the consequence will not bo limited to the disappointment of the Philadelphia doctor in his theory. Leprosy has always been behoved to be highly contagious in all Asiatic countries and on the Levant, where it makes its home, and it is also now so held by the modern physicians who havo chargo oi' the hospitals for lepers in Taoadto, the Sandwich Islands, and Louisiana. Dr. Joseph Jones, president of the Louisiana Board of Health, made only two years ago an exhaustive report on the extent of the disease in tho State, proving incoiitcstibly that it was not only hereditary, but contagious. Nurses and priests who have been brought but momentarily into contact with it have fallen victims to'the disorder.—San Francisco News Letter.