Daily inter mountain. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1881-1901, 1900-08-11
MISSION WORK AMONG LEPERS.

Leperas abound in the world in the
presen' Y. there is scarcely a country
where isease is not to be found In
dia is sA-- to have half a million lepers.
; China has probably a like number. ia
pan has two hundred thousand officially
registered eases of leprosy, and it is
known to abound in the Malay PENN
sula, Siam, the Malay Archipelago, and
the Philippines, also in Korea; SO that.
speaking of India and the East, we are
Well within the mark if we place the
leper population at one million End "a
nan. The disease is found to a large ex-
,ellt IN AFRICA and Madagascar; more or
less IN North and South America: in the
west Indies and in the Hawaiian islands.
MISSION work has been carried on
among lepers for many years. Roman
Calhollcs in olden times were very de-
voted in their attention to lepers. and
all the lazar houses were looked after
ny priests or nuns. Roman Catholics
still nave institutions for lepers in Diff
ferent parts of the world. Among Prot
the first to take up this work, as far
mack as 1919. when they began their noble
work at Hemel-en-Aarde (Heaven and
EARTH in South Africa. AT present, as
is pretty generally known, the Moravians
nave an interesting leper home neal
Jerusalem. where there are men and wo-
mn who, for Christ's sake, are in hourly
attendance OF the suffering inmates Of
individual missionaries and others have
for many years been ministering to lepers
as they found opportunity, and have
done noble service in this direction. It
remained, however, for the Mission to
Lepers in India and the East" to be the
first to enter this field as a society.
founded wholely and solely for the bene-
fit, physical and spiritual, of lepers.
This society. founded in Dublin in the
year 1874. was originally aimed at reach
ing lepers in Ida only, but as the time
went on, the work extended to China
and Japan.
The society is now at work in Sc cen-
ters: in india, Burma, Ceylon, China ard
Japan. and is about to extend it's opera
tons to the Korea and Sumatra. It has
"a asylums or homes of its cwn, Ii
lepers, and aids Is other institutions. It
is interdenominational and International
in it's constitution and in it's working.
1t carries o it's work in cooperation with
the missionaries of % different societies..
among which are several American and
German societies. The most effective
way of reaching lepers has been found
to be by gathering the helpless OF them
into asylums or homes and there minis
Itering to their wants. spiritual and tenn
poral. and where theis is being done the
results are truly marvellous. the writer
has recently been making up some sta
tistics of the work for the year feee
and find some remarkable facts. O. a
total of 1920 lepers and one 1873 untainted
children of lepers, gathered into 10
Christian institutions, watched over by
missionaries, there are 1,l47 protesting
Christians. The two main departments
in the work of this mission are minis
tering to those actually afflicted with
the disease, and saving the as yet un-
tainted children from feeling victims to
the disease. A third andzYery important
branch of the operations Of this society
is thai of providing religious Instruction
for the inmates of government and mu.
nieipal MISUNDERSTANDING Reyia..