THE MOLOKAI LEPERS.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2540, 10 August 1893, Page 3

THE MOLOKAI LEPERS.

Father Damien, whose heroism attracted so much attention in England a few years ago, has found a successor here, writes the Paris correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph, in the person of Pere Sauton, a Benedictine of the Monastery of Ligug<s, who has been commissioned by the French Government to study leprosy. The monk, who is also a medical doctor, much appreciated for his skill and science by the Pans faculty, will first visit leprous districts in Norway, Lapland, Finland, Turkey, Asia Minor, Greece, and Egypt. Returning to France at the end of a year, Pere Sauton will communicate the results of his observations to M. Pasteur, and, under the guidance of the latter, will pursue his researches in order to find, if possible, a cure for the dreadful scourge which is the object of his investigations. Then, in company with his brother, the Abbe Sauton, who is Vicar of Nogent-le-Rotrou, the Benedictine will set out for Molokai. In this place Pere Sauton and other missionaries will try to attenuate the virus of leprosy, if not to stamp out the terrible malady altogether. Pere Sauton has already been among lepers in provincial France, and even in Paris he says that there are at present nuns dying in their convents here after having contracted the leprosy while attending the sick abroad. There are lepers in the St. Louis Hospital, and the bacillus of the malady has been discovered in the Pyrenees and Brittany. None of the home cases are, however, so virulent as those which he intends to treat in the Sandwich Islands according to the latest discoveries or development of medical science.