Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 November 1898 — CAUSE OF LEPROSY. [ARTICLE]

CAUSE OF LEPROSY.

An Exclusively Human Disease and Not Inoculable to Animals. The active cause of leprosy is a apei cific micro-organism, the bacillus leproe. The period of incubation varies from a few minutes to several years. Two principal types or'forms of leprosy that are recognized as the brunt of the disease are determined toward the skin or toward the peripheral nervous system. The first form is termed tubercular; the second, anaesthetic or nerve leprosy. In the firm form infiltrations occcur in the skin, forming nodules or tubercles, which are especially prominent about the forehead, cheeks and ears; later, these nodules break down, froming ulcerating sores; often they occasion pictures of horrible deformity. The tubercular form is the most severe and rapidly fatal; the average duration of life is from five to ten years. In the anaesthetic form the nu-, trition of the skin is interfered with from Implication of the nerves, leading to contractions and deformities of the members; not Infrequently there is marked mutilation from the sinking in of the nose, the loss of the sight, and the dropping off of the fingers and toes, so that only the stumps of the hands aijd feet remain. In this form the course of the disease is slower, and life may be prolonged to ten or fifteen years, or longer. Some patients exhibit the characteristics of. both forms (mixed leprosy). I Leprosy is an exclusively human disease; it is not inoculable to animals. It is never of spontaneous origin, but is invariably derived from the lesions or secretions of a person similarly diseased. Its development in a country previously exempt from the disease may always be traced to its importation in the person of a leper from an Infected center. We know nothing definitely of the mode of infection or the channels of entrance through which the bacillus gains access to the organism—whether by direct contact, by inhalation or imbibition of the germs, or by other intermediaries. Observation proves conclusively that every leper is a possible source of danger to ail witlj whom he may come into intimate and prolonged contact The Swedish bride fills her pocket with bread, which she dispenses to every one she meets on her way ti church, every piece she disposes oi averting, as she believes, a misfortune. He conquers wbe endures.