The Roanoke daily times. (Roanoke, Va.) 1895-1897, 1896-11-24
IS LEpRosY SPREADING
The Growth of This Loathsome Oriental
Disease


When leper was picked up on the
streets of Paris few days ago and car
ried to the st. Louis hospital it was
found that six leprous patients were
already there, and the physicians did not
exhibit rs much concern over the mat
terri as the average man might EXPECT
The fact is, leprosy is not nearly so rare
as we have been taught to think and
throughout the civilized world the dis
ease is vigorously alive, claiming victims
every day of the. year and increasing it's
hold in certain countries with alarming
rapidity. Norway is said to be the most
leprous country in Europe, and it is esti-
mated that over 800 are suffering with it
there, while in Sweden the progress of
the disease has been SO rapid in recent
years that there are 462 victims of it. In
Spain anu Portugal there are numerous
lepcrs' hospitals, which are never with
out patients, and i'll Turkey and the
Ionian islands it gains ground annually.
There are over 500 lepers in Crete, and
the latest statistics show that there are
over 1000 lepers in India. China,
Japan, Hayti, Trinidad, Guiana, Vene-
zuela Brazil, Paraguay, Tonquin and
lndo-China are all invested with leprosy.
The oldest leper colony in this country
is located at Tracidie, in the province of
New Brunswick, Canada. Here proba-
bly, occurred the. first death in North
America from leprosy. 1t was nearly
sixty five years ago that n woman died ut
Tracidie of II peculiar disease, and was
buried by missionary priest of the Ro-
man Catholic Church. The physician who
attended the case went to Europe shortly
afterwards and visited all the foreign
hospitals to find IL parallel case, but he
was unable to find anyone suffering from
the same malady. While visiting in
Norway he SAW several lcpers, and uuon
his return to Canada he unhesitatingly
pronounced the strange case of the dead
woman to have been leprosy
But the strongest part of the story of
how leprosy was started in that country
was revealed later. One of the four
fishermen who carried the body OF the
dead woman to her grave was in his shirt
sleeves at the time and the sharp edge of
the coffin cut through the sleeve into his
skin. The coffin had been rudcly made
and the corpse put in carelessly. A Shiny
discharge from the body :.oozed through
the wooden box and penetrated the skin
OF the fisherman. This caused blood poi
son and the man diedsa short while after
wards from the same malady 1t was
about this time that the physician re-
turned and announced to the board of
health that the woman's disease was lep
rosy. Inside of sixteen years there were
twenty cases of leprosy in Tracalic, and
the provincial government had to take
steps to isolate them from the rest of the
population. The lazaretto was Il misera-
BILE building, where the lepers were forced
to live or die i'll great misery, often suffer-
ing more from hunger and cold than
from the pangs of the disease. The in
mates of this building constantly in
creased, and little was done to improve
their condition until 1866 In that year
the Good Sisters of the Hotel Dcu, in
Montreal, through certain representa-
lions of DIR. Bayard, of Trocadie, under
took to mitigate their suiTerings and to
build proper lazaretto Cor them. The
sisters arrived in Tracadie in 1865 to
create the change they had been plan
ming, and while they Immediately inn
proved the condition of the patients they
were handicapped for many years by the
local board of health and government
St Louis Rcuublic