The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1900-07-23
CONTACT WITH LEPRosY.


The calm and impartial story told by
out staff representative of his visit to
the leper settlement proves the abso-
lutte truth of the statement that segre-
CATION does not segr4gate. The unfor-
tunates who have leprosy are indeed
held captive at Molokai but there
are no precautions taken to keep their
bacilli there. When people from un-
infected districts are permitted to land
at the leper village and hug and kiss
their diseased friends, eat and drink
with them and gather in affectionate
family groups, IL is not necessary TO
ask why leprosy hangs on in these ISL
ands. Were chains of Infection follow
ed up as they were in plague times
here. the Board Of Health would prob
ably find that the liberties allowed rela-
tives with lepers far gone in the dis
ease account for a definite percentage
of the new cases.
We are aware Of the argument that
leprosy is neither infectious nor con-
tagious, but who knows that to be a
scientific verify? To be sure. many
people mingle with lepers and come
away unscathed but so they do with
bubonic and cholera and yellow fever
patients. IL depends upon physical
susceptibility. Two persons do not al
ways catch the same disease though
exposed TO it in the same way. Were
IL true that leprosy cannot be Caught
like smallpox then three out of four
reasons for the existence Of a leper set
Element at Molokai go by the board.
But that IT can be caught as Father
Damien and hosts OF others presum-
ably caught it-by personal contact
with the victims of the scaly plague
Is a hypothesis SO reasonable that nine
out Of ten people accept II as n matter
of course.
When the segregation law was pass
ed there had been the usual compro-
misses for Legislative votes and among
them were certain relaxations of proper
sanitary rules. Parents could not bear
to be forever parted from their child
rem In this life. husbands from wives
and wives from husbands and so. to get
any kind of segregation at all, II was
thought necessary to permit more or
less social intercourse between the lep-
crs and their kin. Under an arbitrary
government such fatal concessions
would not have been thought of. The
lepers would have been banished from
the sight OF all save those who would
accept perpetual exile with them and
the agents OF the Government having
them in charge. But in this parlia-
mentary country votes had to be look
ed for and as n result we got half
way segregation law in which the quar-
antine value Is reduced to low figures.
IL is time that the law was made as
strict as those which were enforced In
Honolulu against the cholera and the
bubonic plague. IL such a change can
be had the Advertiser does not doubt
that I'm less than a generation there
VIII be no more leprosy in Hawaii. The
type we have is growing milder; i'm
proved sanitation has perhaps decreas-
ed the percentage OF infection; what
remains Is to see that people in health
are not permitted to come into contact
with those upon whom decay has set
its dreadful seal. The man Of Scripture
who prayed To be relieved of "the body
OF this death"-the fostering corpse
which. I'm those barbaric days was tied
to the person OF the living convict-had
no more cause to lament than have the
poor creatures who. all unwittingly,
and deceived perhaps by the specious
plea that leprosy Is not infectious. take
into their loving arms those whose
bodies. though alive. already bear the
marks Of putrifaction and whose