Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1895 — LEPROSY IS FEARED. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

LEPROSY IS FEARED.

A VISIT FROM THIS LOATHSOME DISEASE IMMINENT. Story of Father Damien—National and State Boards of Health Should Use Cantion—Disease Is Now in Many States—The Plague Elsewhere. Comes from Forels** Countries. A terrible and constantly Increasing danger menaces the people of the United States. Unless stern and determin-

ed measures are taken by the national and State boards of health to vigorously exclude leper suspects from entering our Atlantic and Pacific ports, as well as from the Mexican and Canadian borders, we may within a few years be placed In the position of India, which to-day has a leper population of close upon 132,000, all of which has been developed within the memory of living men. And if a close scrutiny is not kept by our consuls in foreign countries on the invoices of goods sent from places where lepers abound the contagion may spread here to the same extent it was in Europe in the twelfth century, when there were no less than 20,000 lazar houses on the continent and 2,000 In France alone. The disease is now amoug us. The

Eastern and Southern States have had the germs brought to them direct from three sources—the West Indies, Canada and Southern Europe, the Western States from China, Northern Europe and Oceanica. The leprous taint has taken hold in Louisiana, Florida, Minnesota, lowa, Wisconsin and California, and it is also to be found In a lesser degree in Texas, Oregon, Utah, South Carolina and the State of New York. But from all foreign countries from which the dreaded disease has been brought to our shores, the worst is China. The immigrants from there have penetrated every city in the land, carrying along with them the leprous germs, which, through laundries and cigar factories, where they have been , employed, have distributed the seeds bf the disease by wholesale. Statistics gathered 'py; the State of California have shown that the disease has been established on a firm footing there, and that it is distinctly attributable to Mongolian lepers, some of whom, discovered in New York, were quarantined on North Brother Island, where they still remain. The development of the disease-In Hawaii can be traced from the genesis in 1850. To-day 1,200 of the worst cases have been herded together in the leper settlement of Molokai, which Las proved conclusively the contagiousness

of the disease. The most notable case on record in this connection is that of the humanitarian, Father Damien de Veuster, who in 1873 left his cure in Hawaii to give up his life for the unfortunates kept apart from the rest of the world at Molokai. When he first took upon himself this act of self-sac-

rlfice, and to which he died a martyr, he was a robust, healthy man. Three years later he developed incipient tubercular leprosy, the most horrible and virulent phase of the disease. Within ten years he was a corpse. What shall be done In view of the facts recited to arrest the further spread of the disease in America? The State sanitary codes ought to be amended to specifically Include leprosy as an infectious, contagious or pestilential disease, equally with cholera, yellow fever, small-pox, diphtheria, ship or typhus, typhoid, spotted, relapsing and scarlet fevers, which are the only ones particularly named;: In the sanitary code as to be reported:-.to the State Board of Health. Next, the National Board of Health should force on Federal legislation looking toward the complete isolation and segregation ( of lepers who may emigrate to this country. The same national body should also take steps to bring about an international conference for the better protection of all countries against the curse of leprosy. But especially and above all the national* board of health should see to it that the State Department shall lastruct every United States consul to carefully watch the onward march of leprosy In those foreign countries to which <they are assigned, and to be imperatively Instructed to refuse their consular certificates and signatures for any goods proposed to be Imported to this country against which there is the slightest suspicion of their being handled by lepers, during the processes of production and manufacture, not forgetting to put an absolute boycott or quarantine on those ships the cargoes of which are handled by leper stevedores, a not unusual circumstance in the British West Indies. If, however, these precautions are not immediately carried into effect, a prominent physician asserts that we may have within the next ten years at least 250,000 to 500,000 lepers included among the Inhabitants of the United States.

THE BACILLI OF LEPROSY.

FATHER DAMIEN.

SHOWING “LEPER CLAW."