The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1902-01-07
IS FISH DIET A FACTOR IN
PROPAGATION OF LEPROSY?
Evidence From Many Lands That There Has
Always Been Connection Between
the Disease and the Diet.

16cC the nSh lie. Inc raplOlty III
spread of leprosy in any country is de-
pendent upon the more or less general
Infection of fish and insect life. But
| it does not necessarily follow that alb
stinence from eating fish will cure a
leper. How could it? Leprosy is a
bacillary disease, which thrives in
meat eaters flesh, just as 1t does in
fish eater Even the roast beef eating
Englishman in India succumbs to it's
| ravages, when once inoculated. lnoc-
ulation must first occur, then after
,, wards multiplication of bacilli How
does it occur? Certainly not by direct
| transfer in most cases. We know thaS
public horror separates lepers from the
sound population to a great extent.
Yet the disease from an endemic CEN
| ter will spread in a few decades over
a whole nation. Witness Colombia,
South America, where forty years ago
there were but 400 lepers. while today
there are 10000. In Louisiana today
there are 400 lepers, will there be in
forty years 10000 there?
Mr.. Foster Of the Daily Picayune,
New Orleans, wrote me a short time
ago some interesting details. of the MI
grafton of leprosy with the Acadians
to Louisiana. Since the eighteenth
there 1t came from the cod fisheries
of our North Atlantic coast. 1t is still
endemic in Nova Scotia. Perhaps the
fisheries there are infected. But as long
as our American people, who eat most
of the cod, do not contract leprosy, no
one will believe that Goldfish diet can
produce leprosy. There must be anoth-
er factor at work with it. What is it?
With the view of solving this fish rid
die of leprosy, 1 have described my
theory-fish and mosquito intermediary
host functions in the propagation of
leprosy-to the United States Fish
Commission which recently sailed for
Hawaiian waters. President David
Starr Jordan. of Leland Stanford Uni
versity, California, the chief of the ex-
petition, promises to take an interest
il the question and bring it to the at
tention of Prof. b. w. Evermann, the
ichthyologist of the party. Ny BROTH
er, Prof VIM. II. Ashmead, entomolo-
SlSI ol the CHlltu SldleS NdllOIldt hu-
scum, who accompanied them, will also
investigate the matter. Professor Jor-
dan wrote thus:
April 6, 1901.
"I am very much interested in the
suggestion you made. If it is possible
for any member of our party to under
take such Investigations, / will have it
done. / am not enough Of a bacteriolo-
gist to do anything myself. 1 will place
I1+N n
Evermann. United States Fish Com |
missioner, who has charge of the gen.
eral organization of the expedition
Il found last summer in Japan that
many kinds of fishes were eaten raw. /,
The gold fish, which is found in every
host, as might several of the fresh wa
ter minnowS. The carp would be less
likely to be, as it is not SO much cul- |
tivated. Very truly yours.
DAVID s. JORDAN"
1 have written Mr.. Jonathan Hutch |
inson, of the proposed investigation, |
and asked him to communicate to |
Professor Evermann whatever data
bearing upon the subject he might
deem fit.
Permit me to add that Louisiana is
a mosquito infested and fish eating
State. and if mosquitoes and fish are
hosts in the propagation
of leprosy, no leper asylum should be
permitted in any part of that State.
If it shall be found by this commission
to Hawaii that fish propagate leprosy, +
it will explain at the same time why
the bear-eating Aino of Japan for
twenty centuries has remained immune.
CHI Gcb he !
not to be a factor we shall know then
that bears flesh as diet is preventive
Of leprosy, and that blood serum of the
bear is antagonistic to the lepra-bacil-
JUS. perhaps a cure for the disease.
ALBERT S. ASHMEAD, M. D.
New York City.