The Abilene reflector. [volume] (Abilene, Kan.) 1883-1888, 1884-10-02
LeprOsy, Present and Past.
TIE FOLLOWING extracts are tax,

J
We're to describe it no one would fol-
I low me. More cruel than the clumsy
! torturing weapons of old, it distorts
and scars, and hacks and mains, and
/ destroys its victims inch bv inch, fea-
/ ture by feature, member by member,
Joint by joint, sense by sense, leaving
him TO cumber the earth, and tell the
horrid tale of living death until there
is nothing human Left of him. Ewes,
voice, nose, toes, fingers, feet, hands,
one after the other are slowly deformed
and rot away, until at the end OF ten,
fifteen, twenty years, it may be, the
wretched leper, afflicted in every sense
himself, and hateful to the sight, smell,
hearing, and touch of others, dies de
spised, and the most abiect of men,
''Now, leprosy is disease that has
existed from the earliest historic times.
1t once desolated Europe-Great Brit
ain and ireland. In England it is no
longer met with. In Europe generally,
except just here and there, it is almost
unknown. Is it not then a wonderful
thing, not that cure has not yet been
discovered for leprosy, but that with
ton whether leprosy is communicable
orincommunicable, contagious or hered-
itary; whether it is due to insufficient
and bad food, or bad climate and dirt,
or all combined; to lack of meat or
absence of vegetable diet; to the use OF
salt fish or the want of salt? Such, how
ever, is the case.
81 should not, think, lay myself
open TO contradiction were TO say that
English people, for the most part view
the question of lcprosy, together with
the laws and regulations and treatment
appertaining to it, as matter of purely
antiquarian interest. Not a few, indeed,
look upon it as a sort of Jewish or
Scriptural, if l may so say, disease that
vanquished at the dawn of Christianity
that fell with the fall of the old law
and the rise of the new. And so closely
and absolutely is it associated with and
limited to the old world impressions of
their Bible lessons, that the illusions
made to it in such popular books of
travel as Miss Birds six Months in the
Sandwich Islands and Lady Brassey's
Voyage in the Sunbeam, pass almost
unnOticed.
''Abhorred by everyone, the leper in
India is often ruthlesSly driven by his
own flesh and blood from house and
home, generally to perish by the road
side; while in some places Government
interference alone has put a stop to his
being buried alive-the father burying
the son, the son burying his father.
And not only the leper himself, but also
his relatives and friends, lest in multi
plying their kind they should transmit
the disease to distant generations.
Though no law restraints him from
intercourse with other people, caste
steps in and takes the place of law. The
man of high caste. once leper, from
that moment is turned out of his caste:
he may not sit in the same room or
house with the sound and pure; his own
kith ana kin will not eat what he has
touched or drink or smoke with him.
If his wife eat with him she is put out
of caste. None will marry his daugh-
ters, even though there be not the
slightest sign of leprosy in them, and
they can never be readmitted into caste.
There is no pity and no hope for him.
And when he dies adherence follows
him to the grave; all religious ceremony
is withheld from him, and his body,
given up to the low caste of sweeperS and
such like, is subject 10 the greatest in.
dignity the Hindoos can show their dead.
''Lepers are met with in every stage
Of misery in India. They flock to the or
ders of the Ganges TO end their hopeless
lives on holy ground Pilgrims, they
crowed to POOree to make prayers
and propitiatory offerings to the idol
Lokenauth; and then, failing of their
cure, they continue to haunt the neigh
borhood, and from fresh centers of vice
Us vile and detestable rs the foul cor
ruption that pollutes and makes havoc
of their bodies. Often herded by them
selves at night, they are scattered dur
ing the day along the roadway and in
the bazaars, begging of the pitiful,
and filling with horror the unaccus-
toned stranger. Special hospital
accommodation is provided fol-
them here and there; but in all India,
with its millions of people and its over
a hundred thousand lepers, the asylums
for the leper can almost be counted on
ones fingers; they are not a fourth,
nay, not a fourteenth, part of the lazaI
houses that England in the middle ages
built for the despised children of st.
Lazarus | transfer the following
sketch from Mrs. Scott-SteTensOn'
vivid picture of ''Our Home in Cy.
prus" Mrs. Scott-Stevenson had tho
courage TO visit the leper farm of Nico-
sia, and this is what she saw.
"'My husband requested that tho
two worst cases be pointed out to us.
We were brought to a doorway,
through which we peeped, and were
shown 4 man who lay moaning on a
wooden treStle. Two women who were
attending on him turned him toward
the light. l could only make single
glance, and no more. Not a feature OF
anv kind was discernable, and only by
inflated movements, at regular inter-
walls, of the cheeks, could we tell liv-
ing being lay before rs. We could only
trust he was unconscious; that his con-
dition was more appalling to the on
locker than the actual suffering to him.
self 1t was believed he was quite an
idiot; but as he could neither speak,
nor see, nor smell, nor taste, nor even
hear distinctly it must have been hard
TO tell whether the brain was still con-
scious or not. Food was administered
by pouring liquids down his throat,
but every day this was mercifully be-
coming more impossible. So we could
only hope that death would soon re-
lease him.
"'The spread of leprosy in China al
the present day is said to be enormous.
In Canton alone, according to the re-
port of the College of Physicians, there
were 900 lepers in the Leper Asylum,
besides about $500 at large, believed