The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1902-01-07

IOllOWlHS appears ltic
ical Fortnightly:
Some one has sent me an extract
published in the Medical Sentinel,
pages 191 and 1872, of a report of Jona
than Hutchinson on Recovery from
Leprosy" It was copied from the In
dian Medical Record of October 81, 1900.
The treatment consisted of a small
dose of arsenic. liberal diet and alb
stinence from fish. Mr. Hutchinson
says that the essentials to recovery are
liberal diet, external comforts and
entire absence from uncooked fish. He
says, further, that at Robben Island,
fish is wholly excluded. and that the
best examples of cure have come from
cases in which, as in the United States,
the patient tas migrated to nom
leprosy district and has been able to
secure plenty of non-leprosic and anti
bacillary food.
Not long ago United States Consul
Sol Berliner of Teneriffe, Canary ISL
ands made full report to the State De-
partment on leprosy in the Canaries.
His opinion was that the disease was
endemic among the people there. on ac-
count of their eating a good deal of
fish. often putrid.
Permit me TO observe that this belief
held by these two celebrated leprolo
gists, is common in several leper coun-
tries; between fish and leprosy there
is n relationship, and it is considered
Hutchinson's theory has always been,
that the insidious connection is made
by eating fish. Since medieval times
leprosy in Europe has progressively de-
clined, excepting in those countries
where fish eating has prevailed-Nor-
way, Spain, Portugal. Baltic Russia,
Iceland, the fishing provinces of
France, etc. In fish eating Buddhist
lands. Ieprosy is a veritable scourge.
Since the fifth century in Ieprous ia
pan, religious laws have operated
against killing animals. Thus the peo-
pie were fish-eaters. Raw, even living,
fish were eaten.
Hutchinson thinks that the custom of
Catholic fast days. when meat is pro-
hibited and only fish eaten. has served
to spread leprosy through Europe.
That the advance of Christian civiliza-
ton caused leprosy.
In Hawaii fish could not have caused !
leprosy until the advent of the Chi /
nese- At any rate the two appeared /
ut the same time. Why was that? If /
fish as food was capable of generating !
4 bacillary disease (Which is absurd on |
the face of it,, why should the disease
have waited before attacking the Ka-
nakas, for the arrival of a contami- /
mated race? Nor was there any lep- |
rosy in the land of the dragon fly, as
Japan was called in ancient times, un-
til the advent of contaminated white |
Indonesians sand Monaghan hybrids,
who drove the aboriginal Qeprous i'm
mune) Amos northward. Here again
comes in the question of fish diet, for
the Amos were always bear eaters.
Let us consider this question from
yet another standpoint. j do not be-
lieve in The Hutchinson theory, that
fish diet is cause of Ieprosy. / believe
that fishes that feed on insects. espe-
,ially the mosquito and it's larvae, that
have sucked a leper's blood, or flies
that have sucked leprous sores. COM
municate leprosy to man. In Japan,
as everywhere else, it is the malarial
regions that furnish the most lepers.
But until insect eating fish of the riv-
ers of ieper country have become
with spores of leprosy, j
they cannot communicate the disease,
even when eaten raw. If, therefore,
South African fish diet has produced
eprosy, as Jonathan Hutchinson be-
ieves, it simply means that leprosy has
been endemic there long enough to in