The Lambertville record. [volume] (Lambertville, N.J.) 1872-1968, 1883-01-17
CHASTITY SCENES.


The home of the leper is an enclosure of
several acres on what is called Fisherman's
Point, OH Honolulu Bay. Scattered over
the grounds are scores of cottages, some
connected, others detached, and the offices
and buildings used by DIR. Fitch's assistants
Imagine, if you can, a settlement of Anglo
Saxons or people of any other highly civiliz-
cd race, all of them afflicted with, and all
more or less deforned by, an incurable and
horrible disease--knowing it to be ncurable
and seeing themselves and each other drop
ping to pieces from its dread effects. l can
not imagine such picture, because l hon
estly believe that suicide would make such
settlement impossible among any other than
people still barbarans or else in the child.
hood of civilization. Such was the settle.
ment visited There were men, women
and children living in a world apart from
ours, having nothing worth living for save
mere existence, succession of days marked
only by slow contamination of the death
that had already seized upon their bodies
and had already deprived them of portions,
which were already returned to dust
There were in that strange and unnatural
community marriages, births, deaths.
would not attempt to describe in detail the
unrelieyed ghastiness of the sights there,
yet not one OF the inmates who helped to
make up the absolute dreadfulness OF the
scene failed to greet us with smile and
cordial aloha.
! said not one yet there was one On
bed in q little cottage room, whose open
door faced the dark, cool canon back of the
city, and whose window looked out upon the
lovely bay and let in the lazy murmur of
the waves breaking over the coral reefs lay
native woman, dying. Nearly all of her
right hand had dropped off, but in the REM
pants of her fingers she held feather fan,
which she faulty waved across her distorted
face, to cool the hot, aching eyes that had
not been closed for months, the palsied mus
cles of her eyelids refusing their duty AZ
the doctor spoke pleasantly to her she turn
ed her glaring eyes toward u.s. but did not
speak. "Her mouth is effected, too" the
doctor said. A gentle wind just then came
down from the mountains. The swollen
face rested and the feebly moving hand fell
in gratitude for the mountain breeze, yet,
whom it died away, the hand did not move
again it was her last moment The noun
tain's gentle breath had comtorted her, and
when it died away her breathing ceased too
In one cottage we saw little girl whose
fingers Ind been drawn up until her hand
holf al ha Ind vi, ,taA
with novel cure by calmly stepping on the
bent fingers until she had Strengthened them
out She exhibited the result with pride
four fingers straight and stiff and as useful
as so many wooden pegs would have been.
| On what is called the playground were
hand another with q palsied leg, another
with foot partly gon aud others with
swollen, senseless faces. On the veranda OF
a cottage sat two old natives, both with use.
less legs, but neither of whom showed any
trace of leproiy in face or hands. As
watched them one of them began chanting d
hulu hulu, accompanying 1t with appropriate
movements of his hacas. POSSIBLY obsers.
ing the look OF astonishment on my face, the
old mans companion, with n meaning wink
at me, joined IN the chant, and soon both
the old lepers were chanting and waving
their hands in she sensuous measures of the
hulu hulu.
The medical profession here in Honolulu
Is in terrific dispute about what leprosy is
| % and whether or not il is contagious
This, of course, is nm old, old dispute, but it
has been revived with great violence by the
assertion of DR.. Fitch that it is, if not cur
able, amenable in large degree to treat
ment, and that il is not contagious from con-
tact, such MS would demand the transporta-
ton OF lepers to isolation. Dr. Fitch has
been here two years, and naturally his
youthful but dogmatical contradiction of the
theories of the old and experienced practi-
TONERS has raised discussion of rather
warm nature. However his practice ap-
peals to the sympathies of the natives, and
he has large, if rather ignorant. following.
San Francisco CaA