In a Leper Settlement.

Hokitika Guardian, 12 November 1921, Page 4

In a Leper Settlement.

(By ex-ship’w Surgeon, in Daily Mail). A few Weeks ago The Daily Mail reported that good results wore being obtained by the use ol a new drug in ’■■ treatment of leprosy ill New Zealand. Last March 1 was privileged to hi able to visit the New Zealand Government leper settlement on i Jim 1 Island, which lies in Lyttelton Harbour. I : • island serves a double purpose —one end is reserved for tin* lepers, the other is used as a quarantine station for imported livestock, where horses, cattle, and so forth remain for six weeks or so before lauding on the mainland. The settlement is under tin* supervision of the port medical oflieei, who very kindly showed me all tlu* eases and the* arrangement for their treatment. Six lejiers were living there-—all ol them men, two being whites, the others Maoris and a Samoan. One of the whites had been there for sixteen years, while the other had been a soldier in (.he late war and was supposed to have contracted leprosy on the expedition to Samoa.

Both the nodular and almost hut* types of the disease were to lx* seen in these afflicted people. They had been told by the doctor that a new drug was being sent for from. Sydney, and it was pathetic to see the eagerness with which the poor fellows asked it it had arrived. 'Phis drug somewhat resembles salvarsau, hut is a compound of antimony.

Kneh man had a little wooden house (o himself, containing a living room and a bedroom. A matron and a female cook .have recently been appointed to live in the settlement and look alter the wants of the patients. On Saturday afternoons visitors from Lyttelton sail across to tin* island in launches and are allowed to come to the outskirts of ihe village, bringing little presents of fruit and so forth. There they can sit on forms and converse with the lepers, who stand a few yards oil*. There are hooks available for those who can road, hut 1 did not see that any attempt was made to encourage the lepers to cultivate little kits uf garden, which I think would have brought considerable pleasure into their sad lives.

I came awav lrom Quail Island with my ideas of the infcetiousiiess of leprosy considerably modified. With reasonable precautions those in attendance on leprous patients run little more nsk of leprosy than the nurses and staff in a consumptive hospital do of tuberculosis.