ACROSS PACIFIC SEAS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 26, 26 June 1902, Page 5

ACROSS PACIFIC SEAS.

III.— THE ISLE OF DEATH

By Rev. H. W. Cleary.

I WAVED 'an revoir' to the Tablet readers when our fine ship, the Moana, headed out to sea from the Pacific paradir-e ot Ilonolu'u. It was a warm spring afternoon — April 9 — as we cleaved the blue waters past the low coral reefs and the tall masts of an incoming American four-master upon whose stretched cordage the gentle eastern breeze played softly as upon a mighty harp. The Pacific Btill — and all through the voyage — justified its title, and

' Ite little waves, with their soft, white hands,

Effaced the footprints in the Bands ' of the circling yellow shore over which the palm trees bent their lonfif green plumes. Close to our left, as we headed away towards the pine-clad mountains of British Columbia, the brown and yellow cliffs role gaunt and bare — a rugged coast with sentry rocks up which the white waves leaped and frisked and gambolled like watchdogs at play, while inland there rose rank after rank of Bteep, bare, orowded, purple-shadowed mountains with jagged and fantastic heads that rose sharp and defiant against the sunlit west. Away to the right of our path through the blue waters appeared the long back and sloping sides of lone Molokai, the land of the lepers, the isle of death — encircled by a thin white frill of sea foam. Somebody has described the island kingdom as ' the sweetest and saddest in the world.' It is indeed a paradise of the green and luaoious things that are the gems of botanic life. But the trail of the serpent ia over it, and in the physical order it has left no slimier and fetid mark than that most dreaded of all scourges, that ' most ancient and moat human of all diseases,' Asiatic leprosy. Many years ago, when a slender student of the cornstalk order of architecture, I became greatly interested in the hideous story of the leprosy scourge that had settled down among the towns and Tillages of Normandy during the middle ages. In the neighborhood of Caen alone I connted the sites of no fewer than thirteen leper-hoUBes — Uprotcries, or maladrcries, as they were called in the language of the time. The fascination of the grim subject has never left me. A happy chance threw me into personal intercourse with a Piopus missionary who had spent several years in attendance on

The Lepers,

who are hemmed in a perpetual seclusion on Molokai by the circling blue Bea on the one Bide and by an impassable barrier of sheer preoipioe on the other. People dislike talking leprosy in Honolulu as they dislike conversations about cretinism in certain cantons of Switzerland. But my missionary friend was communicative and interesting in a high degree. So were a few others whom I met on eea and shore, and who had had a first-hand acquaintance with the conditions that prevail in the dismal homes where human flesh reaches its worst degradation, and yet dies not, in stricken Kalawao and Kalaupapa. But there was, after all, but little to tell beyond a touching and harrowing tale of direst human woe and an unwilling and fragmentary story of quiet Christian heroism of which the narrator seemed serenely unconscious. Last year's official Btatistics fell into my hands and were eagerly scanned. The Governor of Hawaii deprecates leper-talk as calculated to cau=e alarm, and apologetically supplies the following facts in figures in reference to the worst plague that gnaws at the vitals of those sunny mid-Pacific islands :—: — On December 31. 1897. there were 828 lepers in the settlements on Molokai. Two years later (December 31, 1899) there were 1014. Of these 876 were Hawaiians, 34 Chinese, ."> Americans, 5 British, 4 Germans, 10 Portuguese, and one Norwegian. Some oO years ago the disease waa unknown in the group. The bacillus (discovered. by the way, by Professor Armauer Hansen among the leprous Norwegian patients at Bergen in 1874) was smuggled into the islands under the yellow hide of a ' heathen Chinee ' some 50 years ago, and in the genial and balmy air of Oahu and the other members of the group it has increased and multiplied almost as fast as its deadly cousin of tuberculosis. In fact the malady is known among the native Hawaiians aB the viai pake or Chinese disease. The Governor's report adds various further particulars : In the great majority of cases the children of leprous patients are not leprous. The native Hawaiians are most subject to the scourge, and Chinese and other Asiatics are aIBO heavy sufferers. The segregation and isolation of patients began by act of parliament in 1865. The north ■ide of Molokai waß selected aB the best site for the purpose. The melancholy settlement consists of 8300 acres on the north side of the island, bounded on one side by the sea, on the other by a great precipice barrier which varies from 1800 to 2000 feet high. There are two ohief villages, Kalawao and Kalaupapa, 762 buildings of various kinda, 299 cottages owned by lepers, 196 houses erected at the expense of the Government for those ot the unfortunates who were unable to pay the cost of erecting their own dwellings. The administrative buildings consist of a superintendent's residence, an abattoir, dispensaries, a Bhop for the distribution of meat, warehoußei, workshops, and storehouses — all under Government BuperTiaion. For the year 1900 the expenditure for the segregation support, and treatment of the lepers was 81,359 dollars (about £16,000) ; the pay-roll amounted to 17,837 dollars (about £3500). 1 The Bishop Home,' saya the Report, ' is in oharge ol the

Franciscan Sisters,

Nearly all the girls of the settlement are there. All do regular routine work when able, attend school for short hours, and their Hveß are brightened as much as possible by the unselfish devotion of the Sisters conneoted with the Home.' At Kalawao (we are further informed) the Baldwin Home for Boys is in charge of the Brothers

of the Franciscan Order. ' The self-sacrifice of the Brothers and Sisters,' says the Report (p. 79), 'in charge of the Boys' and Girls' Homes makes a lasting- impression upon everyone who has vieited the settlement.' There is also a Receiving House for lepers near Honolulu, likewise in charge of the Franciscan Sisters. Thus far the Report. From various other souroes I learned that the Mormons and the Lutherans have each a salaried preacher in the leper-land. In each case the preacher is a native Hawaiian. The only creed that has white representatives to tend the bodies and n.iniHtor to th<» pouls of the lepers ia the Old Church of the Ages. And the affl'cttd one^ and the public note the fact and duly appreciate it. I found it a subject of comment both on sea and shore, ami on board the Moaua there v\an, for a few days after we passed the solitary, silent, mournful island of iiving death, a great demand tor my copy of Charles Warren Studdaid's fearfully fascinating story, 'Jhe Lepers of Mololtai. To its pages I refer all who desire to know of the quiet but s-üblime heroism of Father Damien among the stumps and fag-ends of humanity that clustered so long in unrelieved and hopeless misery on that lone Paoific isle of desolation. The repulsive character of leprosy greatly enhances the heroism of those noble bands of men and women who banish them* selves for ever from all the joys and comforts of ordinary human intercourse and devote their lives to the assuagement of the horrors of that fell°disease which slowly crucifies the hapless dwellers of Molokai. Somebody has described man as by nature a quarrelling and fighting animal. It is, perhaps, for that reason that we bestow so much clamorous approval on the man in khaki uniform who bravely ' faces ihe music 'when the bugles blow and the eyes of his comrades are upon him and their encouraging shouts ringing in his ears and the war correspondent about and the world, by deputy, looking on. Tt ia magnificent. But a thousand times more precious and heroic is the action of those men and women who, without any of the theatrical accompaniments and physioal encouragements of ' battle's magnificently stern array,' and solely for love of God and fellow man, step, perhaps, from boudoir and velvetpile carpet, voluntarily bar the way back again, enter into a living charnel house and toil and endure on and on through the ceaseless sight and touch, and Bmell and taste of long-drawn agony till death comes — and it ' Is beautiful as feet of friend Coming with welcome at our journey's end.' In the popular mmd — so far as the popular mind occupies itself with such unpleasant themes— leprosy is labelled merely as a Bkin disease, But the pestiferous, burrowing bacillus discovered by the Norwegian scientist (Dr. Hansen) tunnels more deeply still into the human anatomy. It does not merely rasp and trouble the skinsurface, but mines along the track of every nerve as well. He thus gives rise to two different kinds of leprosy — that of the nerves (now called by the medical faculty anternine lepro«yj, and than of the skin, which is known as leonine leprosy Its action on the nerves of the patients is sometimes of a decidedly merciful nature — more soothing than

A Pad of Cocaine

on an aching gum. 'It produces,' says a work on leprosy, ' a degree of local insensibility to pain which is almost incredible. If a man burns himself at a fire withour feeling- it, a strong presumption is set up that he is an ar ret-thetie leper ; and if the bacilli are found in particular places, there is ro further loom for doubt.' A recent work on the subject shows that the deadly bacillus refuses to be cultivated, that no animal (not even a moukey) can be inoculated with it, and that its sole affinity is man. ' Leprosy,' says Charles Warren Stoddard in the book referred to above, 'develops slowly. One may be a leper for months or even years before the symptoms of the disease begin to discover themselves and at last become externally evident Then they are unmistakable. But by this time great mischief may have been dime, and done' innocently perhaps ; tor the leper will have but recently become conscious of his state.' The disease is, iuthe present stare of medical knowledge, incurable. In another part of hrn work Professor Stoddard gives as follows the diagnosis of leprosy ' as it is found in nearly every land under the sun ' : ' Wben leprosy is fully developed it is characterised by the presence of dusky red or livid tubercles of different sizes upon the face, lips, nose, eyebrows, ears, and extremities of the body. The skin of the tuberculated face is at the same time thickened, wrinkled, and shining, aud the features are very greatly distorted. The hair of the eye-brows, eye-lashes, and beard falls off ; the eyes are often injected, and the conjunctiva swelled ; the pupil of the eye contracts, giving the organ a weird cat-like expression ; the voice becomes hoarse and nasal ; the sense' of smell is impaired or lost, and that of touch, or common sensation is strangely altered. The tuberculated parts, which are, in the first instance, super-sensitive, latterly in the course of the disease become paralysed or anesthetic. As the malady progresses, the' tubercles soften and open ; ulcerations of similar mucous tubercles appear in the nose and throat, rendering the breath extremely offensive ; tubercular masses, or leprous tubercles, as shown by dissection, begin to form internally upon various mucous membranes and on the surface of the kidneys, lungs, etc., cracks, fissures, and circular ulcers appear on the fingers, toes, and extremitiep, and joint after joint drops off by a kind of spontaneous gangrene. Sometimes the upper and sometimes the lower extremities are specially afflicted by this" mortification and mutilation of parts.' All this conveys in the cold, precise language of science what Maundrel wrote of what he saw among the lepers of Syria in his day ; ' It ia a distemper so noisome that it might well pass for The Utmost Corruption of the human body on this side of the grave.' Professor Stoddard described the putrescent, but living, remains of an old man leper whom he saw under Father Daniien's care at Molokai as 'an ignominious heap of corruption awaiting tardy death," aud told how

' the flesh of an arm that lay across the breast was eaten away — looked as if it had been eaten by ratp, — but it was only the fang of the destroyer that had struck there.' Of the wretched man's deformed companions in misery, he said that they jmeted him with smiles, like children — ' smiled innocently and amiably, but with an expression that was satirical and sometimes almost devilish ; their •wollen faces, with the flesh knotted and blotched, grew a thousand times more horrible when they Bmiled, and the features bnre a look of fixed agony never to be forgotten by one who has beheld it.' Once, he approached a bedpide among the wards of the hospital at Kalawao to Bee ' what seemed a little bundle of rags, or rubbish, half hidden under a soiled blanket. The cunous doctor?.' spys tbe Professor, l were about to examine ir, when the good Father (Damien) seized me aiid cried excitedly : " You must not look I

You Must Not Look 1 "

I assured him that I was not at all afraid to see even the worst that could be shown me there ; for my ey< s had become accustomed to horrors, and the most sickening sights no longer affected me. A corner of the blanket was raieed, cautiously ; a breathing object lay beneath ; a face, a human face, was turned slowly towards vs — a face in which scarcely a trace of anything human remained. The dark skin was puffed out aud blackened ; a kind of mosa, or mould, gummy and glistening, covered it ; the muHcles of the mouth, having contracted, laid bare the grinning teeth ; the thickened tongue lay like a fig between them ; the eyelid?, curled lightly back, exposed the inner surface, and the protruding eyeballs, now shapeless and broken, looked not unlike bursted grapes. It was a leprous child, who within the last few day* had assumed that hoinble visage. Surely the grave knows DOthing more frightful than this ! ' What a Christ-like spirit !«• i« th<*t baa ltd priest and brother and nun into that mournful land to soothe such woe, and to teach those decomposing fragments of humanity how to live and how to die ! That sunny but dismal spot on tbe coast of Molokai has indeed witnessed many an act of noble Catholic self-devotion,

A thousand glorious actions that might claim

Triumphant laurels and immortal fame.' But the eye of the patient heroes in tbe black Picpus poutane and the brown Franciscan habit iw not set upon fading crowns, but uion the better and higher things tbat lie b yond the, portal* ot death and the grave. At this hour there aie many in that leper land that pit and watch and pray for the merciful death th it creeps on wiih such sow and la<,-</>ird steps. For the wretched para ue goes about its work in a leisured way, and to the stricken t-t.IL rer dta!h, like King Charlie, ia 'long a-comiu'.' Multiall. for instance, t. lln of a veneiable dame of eighty who h<id t-pent titty years of her loi.g life as a patient on a leper farm in Cjprvn ; and i have r^ad of inmates of the grtat Home conducted by Catholic Sibters at Traca''ie (New Brunswick) who suffered for half a century before death came to their relief. But usually the patunt's life does not drag its heavy and lengthened chain for more than ten years. But Molokai ia not the only peene of the Church's active and tender sympathy for lope-re She follows them all over the earth and gathers them to her artnp. Ju many a conversation on ship and shore I f^und the opinion curiouply prevalent that It prosy is practically extinct. And yet it is

More or Less Common

la Japan, China, Burmah, India, and othf r places in the Fast, ard I havo real the opinions of several experts t> the effect that trie, mal.idy in rapidly increasing on the e'irtb. Sti'isttis on tho Babjf'ot h.ivo be^n publishel from t'nvi t) tune. But if thn experience ot the Hawaiian I 1 inds is repeated elsewhere the printed figures mast be \ery incoitipkte Art'-mus Ward's stormy < xper:enctsi an a census collector arc probably ot ten repeatid hy Government a£i j n(H go ng their melancholy rounds in se.m h of lepers, for among the Ilawiians (and presumably elsewhere) patients and their friend^ not unnaturally conceal the disease until it has marie such headway that the drawled l'-oluion — the sentence which practically means perpetual b'uushini nt — becomes -it length inevitab'p. And yet the lint is sufficiently high and coders a wide rang*' of the earth's Hurfiico. In the latest edition of hi- Dirt ion iry of Statistics Mulhall gave the numbers of lexers in various centres as follows :—: — Canton, 10.000 ; Cr< te, !<OO ; Greece, .T;t) ; Iceland, l.'i ; India (1XX1 ), IMI ,<iUO ; lYLmritiUH, :>.'W> ; Norway, 1770; Portugal, 3000; R< - uniun, G'M; Rio Janiero, 12.'5 ; Swed<n, 100. 'In Russia,' pays he, ' leprosy is found in sixty-five districts, and the number of fre-h victims registered in 1837 was 015. Thi3 would lead us to suppose that the existing number of lepera in the Empire ia about 6000.' Leprosy also occnrn in Spain, lialy, Finland, Turkey, Palestine (near Jeiuaalem), many of the Mediterranean islands, all round the coast of Africa, on Robben Inland (Capetown), in Madaga?cir, the Seychelles Islands, New Brunswick (Canada), the United States, the West Indiep, many paits of the fc'outh American continent, occasionally in Australia, and 'in ull the countries and most of the islands on the .south of Asia, from Arabia and Persia to China and Japan.' Here is 'a girdle round about the earth' such as Puck never dreamed of on that midsummer night. Some time ago, in writing upon a kindred subject, I quoted figures which showed.that during the past few decades leprosy has spread in certain places in quite

An Alarming Way

During the nineteenth century, for instance, the number of lepers in Columbia rose from a modest 97 to 30,000. In 18G2 there were 27 patients in the leper village of Contratacon, now in charge of the Salesian Fathers. It now contains a leper population of about 1000 eouK One estimate before us states that there are over 250,000 lei>er3 in India Surue eleven years ago Sir Morell Mackenzie, who had made special investigations on leprosy, wrote as follows in the A met re nth Century on its prevalence in Europe: ' Portugal has more lepers than any other European country except Norway. In Italy leprosy is met with on the Genoese Riviera ; it

was also found till quite recently at Comacchio, in the Farrara marshes. In Sicily the disease hns been steadily spreading for the last thirty or forty years. In annexing Nice, France took over with it a considerable number of Italian lrpers belonging to La Turbine and neighboring places, bat the diseape iB now almost extinct in these localities. Small foci of lepiosy still exist in The6saly and Macedonia ; the affection is not rare in some of the iEgean Islands e.g., Samoa, Rhode*, Chiop, and Mitylene— -and it is extraordinarily prevalent m Crete. It ie spreading to an alarming degree in Russia, especially in the Baltic provinces and it has lately been found ncceseary to establish a special hospital at Riga. In St. Petersburg cube* are occasionally, tuuugh very rarely, met with ; at least half of tb*m are imported from outlying provinces "Sporadic" cases are said to occur ia tx.nie parts of Hungary and Uoumanin,' In Sweden, where the disease wt.s extremely prevalent up to the beginning of the nineteenth century, it seems now to have almost died out. Norway is unquestionably the most considerable leprosy centre in Europe at the present day,- but the disease is curiously limited to particular regious, such as the districts round Bergen, Molde, and Trondhjem.

It has occurred in various parts of the United States, chiefly on the Pacific Coast and in New Oeleans. It will be remembered that cnses of leprosy, chiefly among Asiatics, but on few occasions among Europeans, have cropped up in various States of the Australian Commonwealth. And last year a case was discovered and promptly isolated at Palmerston South, in New Zealand. Leprosy is olearly not an enemy to parley wi'k. And the health authorities of New Zealand and of the Commonwealth — with its influx of colored population from the stricken areaa of the Far East — would do well to read aud ponder well the warning conveyed in Charles Warren Stoddarda 'Jhe Lepers of Molokai.