( 10 )
30. It may be seen that in cases Nos. 7 and 11 there is evidence of
hereditary taint sufficient to account for the appearance of the disease, although the
wife had not been affected.
In No. 1 a young man deliberately married a leper woman, and became himself
a leper at the early age of 24. It seems at least lilcely that the man had reason
to think he himself was not free from hereditary taint, although he states to the
contrary.
In No. 6 a man marries a woman whose grandfather and father had been
lepers. In No. 10 a man marries a woman whose father had died of leprosy. I
think the same remark applies to these cases.
In No. 2 a woman marries a man whose father and elder sister had been lepers.
The same remark is applicable, although, perhaps, less forcibly than in the case of
a man who marries a woman of notoriously leper family. In No. 5 a woman
marries a man whose elder brother was a leper.
Of the four remaining cases, Nos. 3, 4, 8, and 9. In No. 8 the early age at
which the man was affected, at 18, points forcibly to hereditary taint.
Altogether I think the conclusion probably well founded, that at least the
majority of these cases in which both husband and wife suffered were cases of
intermarriages between members of leprous families, the hereditary taint existing
both in husband and wife.
31. But, granting that this conclusion may not be warrantable, still the fact
remains that of 855 cases of cohabitation, than which no closer form of human
intercourse can be imagined, only 11, or 1·3 per cent., are discoverable in which
suspicion of the communication of the disease from the husband to the wife, or
from the wife to the husband, arises.
Guaged by this test, the probability of any contagious origin of leprosy arising
out of the ordinary intercourse of lepers with the general public becomes infinite-
simal. A view, further strengthened by the fact, that in some cases of the 855
above-mentioned, it is recorded that a leprous husband had married two or three
wives, who cohabited with him without in any such instance any wife being affected
with leprosy.
32. Yet, although infinitesimal, it cannot be declared non-existent, as viewed
by the light thrown on this point in the histories under consideration. For, in
addition to the perhaps doubtful cases recorded above, one leper at Cawnpore attri-
buted the disease to contagion, in that he had lived next door to a shopkeeper who
was a leper. And, most important of all, Dr. Fitzgerald records the case of a
Colonel in the Indian Service who some years ago became a leper, and could
account for his misfortune only by the fact that he had continued to cohabit with
a Native woman after she had been attacked with leprosy.
33. In regard to hereditary taint as a cause of the disease, the histories
contain valuable evidence which may be classified as follows :
Number of lepers who ac-
knowledged that such
of their relations suf-
fered from leprosy.
RELATIONSHIPS.
173
46
61
5
7
26
1,194 1,531
Deducting the seven persons who stated that their wife's father or mother only
had suffered from leprosy, the first five columns of the account provide a total of 304
persons who stated that their blood relations had suffered from the disease within,
their knowledge, or nearly one in five (19·8 per cent.) of the lepers examined.
Several of these 304 persons acknowledged that their blood relations for two or three
generations back had suffered, and in such cases, only the fact as regards the near-
est blood relation of those affected was entered in the statement.
It will be noticed how large a proportion of those who acknowledged to heredi-
tary taint stated that either father or mother had been affected. This was to be ex-
pected of persons of limited or blunted intellect, such as the majority of lepers are,
for they would be likely to know or remember little of any relation far removed or
not living within their own sphere of observation.
Nineteen persons stated that only their grand-parents had suffered, which
points to the fact that leprosy may descend to the grand-children without visibly