INDIA'S LEPERS.

Bruce Herald, Volume XXXXIV, Issue 61, 6 July 1908, Page 2

INDIA'S LEPERS.

000,000 AND ON THE INCREASE.

The Rev. William Powell, who has spent 22 years in Southern India Baptist Missionary Society, gave a representative" of the Sydney 'Daily Telegraph' some interesting information regarding his work among the lepers of that country. Mr Powell has spent 19 years in the district of Guntur, where he is superintendent of a leper home at Baptatla. He said he had 116 lepers in the home, comprising, Hindoos, Mohammedans, Christians and others, in all the stages of the disease. There was a little cnild six months old, and the others ranged in ages up to one mari said to be 70. Lepers of all castes and creeds were received, only those able to pay for food and medicine being asked to do so. His 19 years' experience, Mr Powell said, had proved that the disease was highly contagious, and frequently hereditary. There was a family of five in the home, and the father had died a few years ago. He knew of a family of eleven, all afflicted. The best doctors in India said there was no hope for the victims, though much could be done to alleviate their sufferings. The reason so many lepers were roaming through the country was that the majority were outcasts. It was supposed that they had committed the unpardonable sins of the Hindoo religion, incurring the displeasure of the gods, who had crushed them with the awful scourge. Many of the Brahmin priests taught that lepers should not have even the smallest acts of kindness shown to them, and be allowed to suffer to the end of their diays. There were numbers in the home who had told him they were driven from their homes and deprived of their rights by their own people. In the' mission he had < a little communion of 56 lepers, a Christian Endeavor Sooioty of 46, and a day school of 22 lepers. There was no place of worship except the open air, and frequently meetings were broken up by the heat or Mr Powell said his object in visiting Australia was to collect about £3OO for the erection of a meeting I lace ajid providing a home for the untainted children of lepers, in the hope that by taking them from their parents they might be saved from the cruel disease. He had over 30 applications on behalf of such children. He calculated that there were 600,000 lepers in India, and the number was on the increase.