Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 November 1893 — Contagiousness of Leprosy. [ARTICLE]

Contagiousness of Leprosy.

In a paper giving the result of his careful and prolonged investigations of this subject, Dr. Duncan Buckley declares that it is not proven that any number of individuals have ever acquired the disease from direct contact with others affected, or that it has ever been traced, in any proportion of cases worth mentioning, directly from one person to another. There is strong reason to suspect, he says, that it may first be introduced into the system by the way of food, fish being the most likely of all substances to furnish and convey the poison; heredity probably accounts for a share of the cases, but the disease is not necessarily transmitted by inheritance; inoculation with leprous matter may be the means of conveying the disease when all the conditions are favorable.