Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 February 1894 — Lepers at Large. [ARTICLE]

Lepers at Large.

Lepers are very plentiful on the island of Jamaica in the West Indies. They mix with the people without let or hindrance, plying all manners of trades and vocations, even to selling fruits and cakes on the public streets and keeping j butcher shops and bakeries. The government has provided a leper hospital at Spanish Town, which ordinarily shelters a hundred or more lepers. But there is no restriction on their coming and going as they please. Good care and treatment is. provided forjthem, and as is the nature of the average Jamaican negro, they are well pleased to have some one provide for them, and thus enable them to live without work and care. But when they take a notion to go to see their friends, or to visit Kingston to see the sights, they simply go, and none hinders them. The physicians and thoughtful people of the island periodically try to secure some psoper treatment of the very serious leper question, but humanity’s prevailing type in the tropics is easy going, and nothing is done;