Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 November 1874 — Leprosy in Canada. [ARTICLE]

Leprosy in Canada.

In the Arcadian village of Tracadie, near the mouth of the Miramichi River, says the Toronto Globe. there have been lepers for the last eighty or ninety years. A hospital for their benefit is supported by the local government. A corre- i spondent of the ChurcJt'Jvurnal. who has : recently made a visit to the establish- 1 ment, says the lazaretto, though well kept as far as it goes, is much too small to furnish the requisite- accommodation. | The sexes are kept apart, and everything is done for the comfort of the unfortunates that is possible with the means placed at the disposal of those who manage the institution. The leprosy from which they sutler is j elephantiagis gmcorum, so called from its tendency to make the limbs swell to elephantine proportions. The disease is understood to have been brought there by a French vessel, which, on its return voyage from Smyrna, touched at the Island of Mitylene, and took in a large quantity of clothing and other stores, and on her way to Beanbaris Island—a French military port —she "was wrecked near the mouth of the Miramichi. The people in the neighborhood played the part of wreckers, and helped themselves to the clothes cast ashore, which, it is supposed, were tainted with leprosy, the consequence of which was that the disease soon broke out among them. Another account is, that the vessel in question brought two lepers from St. Maloes, and that every leper known in Tracadie descended from one or the other of these \ men. The prevailing opinion there is that the disease is not contagious, but simply hereditarv. The people have no dread of it, an 1 persons engaged about the lepers for vears never contract the disease. Not only do the lepers marry

among themselves, but such is the feeling among the poor French in Traeadic that there is-no repugnance in many cases among perfectly healthy people to taking lepers for husbands or wives. The taint generally manifests itself in every alternate generation. In this way the disease has become permanently seated in the locality, while the general poverty and not very cleanly habits of the French population tend to extend and intensify it. It shows itself in the form of small white spots on the breast; then the face assumes a puffy appearance, and there is much pain, languor and, drowsiness. The fingers become crooked, the neck swells, the limbs show all the symptoms of dropsy, the nails fall off, and at last the throat and lungs are attacked, and the sufferer dies, a mere mass of, loathsome disease. Its duration varies from five to twenty years, according to the strength of constitution.