Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1896-12-25
GROWTH OF LEPROSY,
Its First Appearance fin Europe and
Introduction Into Canada.

It's First Appearance fin Europe and
Introduction Into Canada.
From the Globe-Democrat
When leper was picked up in the streets
of Paris few days ago and carried to the
St. Louis Hospital it was found that six
leprous patients did not exhibit as much
concern over the matter as the average
man might expect. The fact is. leprosy is
not SO rare as we have been taught to
think, and throughout the civilized world
the disease is vigorously alive, claiming
victims every day of the year and increas-
| ing its hold in certain countries with alarm
| ing rapidity. Norway is said to be the most
| leprous country in Europe, and it is esti-
mated that over 500 are suffering from it
there, while in Sweden the progress of the
| disease has been SO rapid in recent years
| that there are 46o victims of 1t. In Spain
and Portugal there are numerous leper
hospitals, which are never without pa
| tients, and in Turkey and the Ionian Is
lands il gains ground annually. There are
over 800 lepers in Crete, and the latest
| statistics show that there are 100000 lepers
| in India. China, Japan, Hayti, Trinidad
| Guiana Venezuela, Brazil. Paraguay Tom
| quin and Indo-China are all infested with
leprosy.
But when come nearer home We find
! that the disease has made alarming pro-
| gresS in certain quarters.
| The oldest leper colony in this part is To-
| Gated at Tracadie, in the province of New
| Brunswick, Canada. Here probably occur
| red the first death in North America from
| leprosy. 1t was nearly siXty-five years ago
| that a woman died in Tracade of a peculiar
| disease and was buried by missionary
| priest of the Roman Catholic Church. The
! physician who attended the case went to
| Europe shortly afterward and visited all of
| the foreign hospitals to find a parallel case,
but he unable to find any one suffer
| ing from the same malady. While visiting
in Norway he saw several lepers, and upon
his return to Canada he unhestatingly pro-
nounced the strange case of the dead wo-
man to have been leprosy.
| But the strangest part of the story of how
leprosy started in that country was re-
| yealed 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 the skin. The cof-
i fin had been rudely made and the corpse
| put in carelessly. A Shiny discharge from
| the body oozed through the wooden box
and entered the punctured flesh of the fish
| ernan. This caused blood poisoning, and
| the man died short time afterward from
| the same n,alady. 1t was about this time
that the physician returned and announced
| to the board of health that the woman's
| disease was leprosy. Inside of sixteen years
| there were twenty lepers in Tracadie, and
the provincial government had to take steps
| to isolate them from the rest Of the popua-
| ton. The lazaretto was a miserable build
| ing, where the lepers were forced to live
4 and die in great misery, often suffering
| more from hunger and cold than from the
pangs of the disease. The inmates Of this
building constantly increased, and little was
done to improve their condition until 1896.
In that year the Good Sisters of the Hotel
Dleu, In Montreal. through certain repre-
sensations of DIR. Bayard of TracadIe. IN
dertook to mitigate their sufferings and to
| build q proper iazaretto FOR them. The
| sisters arrived In Tracadie in 1853 to create
the change they had been planning and,
| while they Immediately improved the con-
1 dition of the patients, they we're handicap
1 ped for many years by the Interference OF
J the local board of health and government.