THE LEPERS OF BOMBAY.

Patea Mail, Volume I, Issue 99, 22 March 1876, Page 3

THE LEPERS OF BOMBAY.

The “ Lancet” is reminded by “ the gorgeous displays, the festivities, and other manifestations of rejoicing in the East with which the Prince of Wales has been welcomed,” of th ; sad condition of the lepers in Bombay. What leprosy is no one who has not seen it can well imagine, and it is unnecessary to describe it. But in the Jamsctjee Jchccbhoy Dhurrumsaia, a refuge lor the destitute and sick in Bombay, the “Lancet,” on the authority of the “ Times of India,” says that there are some hundred and twenty lepers lodged at the present time, sharing its scanty accommodation with an approximately equal number ot the poor, aged, and crippled. The lepers live in what are called crawls or cells, some six toot long by five foot wide, and the institution is so full that often two lepers are crowded into one of them. They are without furniture, or even cooking utensils, but each of them is allowed three pounds of rice and three picc with which to pay for fuel to dross their food. They consist of men, women, and children, the children being the offpsring of the men and women, some of them being born in the Dhurrumsaia itself, for no separation of the sexes is attempted, or it seems even thought of. Unfortunate creatures with “ their limbs wasted till only the outlines of the hones remain, or else swollen out of all form of limbs,” sit or lie about as they choose, without supervision or medical care except from one charitable physician, whose name is withheld, at his own request seemingly. They are visited by no friends and by no minister of any ichgion. “ They are abandoned,” says the “ Lancet” “ ot God and man, and were it not that the Dhurumsala gives them the half of a six-foot cell in which to lie, and a handful of rice with which to sustain life, t vey would die in their sores along our streets and in our compounds. Only those who arc very much afflicted are admitted into the refuge. Those who arc not in so advanced a state of disease are sent away to beg in the public highways and byways until they arc sick enough to be taken into' the Dhurumsala.