Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 August 1890 — AMERICA’S LAZARETTO. [ARTICLE]

AMERICA’S LAZARETTO.

Pictures of the Settlement o. L-epers. i A New York Herald special from Tracadie, N. 8., says: One has not to go to far Molokai to witness that awful blight Qf the flesh, leprosy. Here in this out of the way spot of New Brunswick, on the shores of the great ocean, are sights to make the soul sick. Here are literally immured a score or more of wretches touched with a foulness which, for no fault of their own, exchides them forever from the world. It is true they are treated wi h more consideration than the lepers of Scriptural times who dwelt in the open sepulchers about Jerusalem, subsisting on the fragments that accidental charity dropped on the j ground in the wilderness. Nor is heard from that terrible cry as of a lost soul in the Dantean hell, “Unclean! Unclean!” No, the lot of these unfortunates is made as endurable as the malady of which they are victims will permit. The Dominion government has erected a commodius hospital on the banks of the Tracadie river, over-looking the gulf into which the slender streamlet falls. It would be difficult to find anywhere e lovelier combination of “streamlet and hill” than this. Would that one could forget the hopeless fate of these fellows. But alas! they are “the world forgets ting by the world forgot.” All that makes life worth enduring has been withdrawn from them.

Nevertheless, it is pleasant to know that their lot is more endurable than it was years ago. When the lazaretto was established about forty-five years ago the poor creatures were lassoOpd like beasts, drawn by ropes and beaten with long poles to force them toward the lazaretto. No one would touch them. They were torn from the bosom of their families although in many cases they were the sole support of wife and children. The cottages which then constituted the hospitals wore filthy and uncared for. Malei and females were cast together, and the contamination of the immorality was added to the other horrors. Their food was laid down on the ground, to be eaten where they chose. To the r people in the surrounding country the name ‘‘lazaretto” was clothed with all the horrors of Gehenna. Little wonder then that when a member of a family was attacked with the loathsome disease his relatives took every precaution to conceal his condition. It may well be supposed that this secrecy tended to spread the disease. The condition of the lazaretto at length became a public scandal; so much so that in 1868 it reached the ears of Sister St. John (Miss Vigor) of the hotel Dieu, Montreal. She volunteered to go and care for these poor outcasts. Other volunteers were asked for and every sister in the house tendered her services. Seven were chosen, carefully intstrueted in the treatment of leprocy, and then they started a mission compared with which the task of cleaning the Augean stables was a light one. They found the lazaretto a veritable abode of the damned. But the sisters cheerfully set to work, and in a very few years everything was transformed. The provincial government of New Brunswick, glad to have the scandal removed, provided all necessary funds for meeting the expenses of the institution. From being a loathsome charnel house it was transformed into a home. The inmates ana the house itself are kept scrupulously clean. Hired attendants do alt the manual work. The inmates have no tasks imposed on them. Their path to death is smoothed and relieved of eares. They have a small farm with which they may do what they choose. They have boats in which they fish and idle a way the summer days. As to the origin of the disease, some find it in the deterioration caused by generations of intermarriages. I'he county of Gloucester, which is the seat of the disease, is settled by Acadian French and shows to a large extent from the outside world by their different tongues The little community married and intermarried until nearly everybody was related to everybody else. One story is that 140 years ago a bark from the coast of byria was wrecked in th§ Gulf of St. Lawrence just Qtf the shores of Glouscester county. The rescued sailors stayed for somr -considerable time with the Acadians. and from them the latter contracted the first case of leprosy. ( Another version has it that a stranger hailing from Quebec was afilicted with the horror and left it as a legacy to his entertainers,, while etill another story is that the disease was contracted through some of the people eating putrid fish. The disease is called leprosy, although it is probable thatiti9 in many respects different from the leprosy which whitened skin and rotted the bones of the Hebrews of old. But this is undoubtedly a malady of the same nature. It ha> been called by medical men Greek elephantaisis. A recent authority thus describes its symptoms: “The first indication of the disease is the app aranee of tiny tubercles on the skin, and especially on the face. These increase from the size of a pinhead to that of a hazelnut. Tho nose and lips become thickened and swollen so that the mouth is distorted and the features unrecognizable. The eyes droop, and eye-lashes and eyo-brows, and sometimes the hair drop out. < After a time the tubercles break, ulcerate and_diachacee v j,K li< tacking the cartilage and bone, and i piece by piece joints'and flesh fall off. until death gives the sufferer freedom ‘ from his. horrible disease.” The average duration from the time , the.first symptom is discovered until death ensues is about ten or twelve years. The lazaretto wis taken in charge of by the Dominion govorn-

jment in 1880, and Dr. Smith was 1 placed in charge. He ko ps a sharp l lookout for infected persons. In a i conversation had with the doctor, ‘he said: “I am not yet satisfied that the disease is incurable. I discharged one rnan from the hospital some years ago and he»bas had no return of the symptoms. Last year I discharged a girl who had been admitt :d to the lazaretto just as soon as the first symptoms of infection developed themselves. Still, though these two are apparently free from the malady, I do not regard the cases as permanently curqd and I still hold them under close surveillance. Of late the disease has been dying out in Tracadie, its original seat. But out of five new cases taken in the last year, one was from Gape Breton and four from the parishes which adjoin Tracadie. I have traced a new focus to the disease situated between Shippegan and Cnraquet, and from this center I have traced it to other settlements.” The act which gives the doctor authority to segregate pareuts does not apply to the new hotbeds of the disease., hut. he feels that as soon as he possesses that power he will be able to stamp it out entirely.