The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1908-08-04
SOME STARTLING VIEWS ON
THE QUESTION OF LEPROSY
DR.. Ashmead of New York Communicates
Them to the Evening Post Something
New About Leprosy in Hawaii.

wild talk lately about g the cruelty to
the leper, +" ''absurdity and monstros
ity to isolate lepers, - i" senseless dread
of leprosy,' 'sthe danger of infection
in this disease is not so much, indeed
by a thousand degrees as that we have
daily to encounter from tuberculosis, .
etc, etc.
But, pray, are not our health authori-
ties losing their heads entirely in deter
mining that nothing at all of vigilance
is necessary to protect the healthy ones
of the community from the leper? Here
in this great cosmopolitan city of four
million souls, the gateway to our great
republic of eighty million inhabitants,
composed of immigrants from every
leper country on earth, so-called health
authorities absolutely refuse to consider
lepers as sick persons entitled to receive
ordinary hospital relief of any kind, I'M
less they are paupers. The commissioner
of charities, Mr. Hebberd, and not the
health commissioner, has jurisdiction
over those and he is compelled to treat
them in separate hospital as paupers; :.
he does not put them in the common
pauper ward The contagious disease
! department of New York city and those
in charge of the ordinary non-contag-
ious diseases will not allow a leper in
any of the common wards. Why2 Sure
ly the disease is either contagious or
non-contagious. Then why may not
either one or the other receive lepers7
If leprosy is non-contagious, as the New
York Board says it is, why should not
those suffering from that non-contagious
disease be received in the common char
ity wardsR Surely the leper is sick!-
every leper, whether a pauper or not.
And why should not the leprous pauper
be treated in the common wards? There
is incongruity here in some ones rea-
soning. !
Besides this point there is another :
one / wish to take. A comparison has
been made between the danger to the
well community from leprosy, consider
ing it as contagious disease, and that
from tuberculosis. 1t is claimed by
some writers in the public prints that
Hthis last is a thousand times greater
than the former Such authorities are
really too benevolent. In some of our
States those in charge of the tubercu-
losis problem seem too willing to revert
to ''harsh necessary measures as belong
ed to the middle ages regarding lep-
ers,' when many tuberculosis types of
disease were looked upon as leprosy.
Between these two diseases as we know
them today there is slight variation One
is just as destructive to the race as the
other. Then why not treat them alike? {
Only yesterday Tin point If time) DR.. {
Joseph c. Wilson, professor at the re- {
nowned Jefferson Medicsl College in Z
has advocated (quite S
lightly, in his address delivered be- t
ore the medical inspectors of health of t
that "men and women S
from tuberculosis (not leprosy, a
mind you!) should not be allowed to p
marry ''Such sufferers he said, h
as do marry and beget children, S
hould have their children taken away f
rom them 'These things he said, t
seem cruel To the patients they s.
re cruel, but society must protect
self and I firmly believe that G;
lws covering one or the other of these n
viii some day be enact o,
L. DR.. Wilson, the writer of these II
is one of the best-known au- Sc
lorities on tuberculosis in that State.
ere is commended. then, for the con- ri
oil of consumption, what we advocate ci
" leprosy-absolute separation of the fl
seased from the we'll In no other h.
ay can either of these diseases, so he
milar to each other, be controlled. 7s
The tubercle bacillus is thought by
any of us to be identical with the at
per bacillus of the Middle Ages in an 10
,idemie form. Then even harsher w,
easures were applied to both diseases, #,
der one name, to protect and save the III,
ricken communities. France alone had an
90 leprosaria, and Christendom 90
900. an
The elimination of the bones from "a,
e Madeleines, as the old leper GENE III.
les of France are called, of that time, VIII
emily made by DR. Raymond of Paris, pie
5 proved that many of those who CIV.
d in those leper asylums had been Gle
ferers from two other diseases, tn to
,culosis and syphilis. The bone we
lcers' exhibited in the supposed ion
er careasses had slain thousands by Th,
,erculosis and the other disease in mo-
ad of leprosy. The clinical pictures ma
these three diseases must have been bee
refore very similar. des
'ome of the best-known ieprologists spr,