AMONG THE LEPERS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVII, Issue 111, 12 May 1909, Page 10

AMONG THE LEPERS.

EXPERIENCES OF JACK LONDON. The fate of the leper has always been accounted the saddest on earth. Suffering from a loathsome and incurable disease, shunned by his kind, and condemned to perpetual isolation, this unfortunate creature is generally considered as the most miserable of outcasts, to whom death must come as a happy release from a life of suffering. Yet according to Jack London, who has lately visited the leper settlements at Molokai, in the Sandwich Islands, and described what he saw, in the Contemporary Review, the lepers are by no means the unhappy wr etches they are commonly supjwsed to be. Leprosy is not as contagious a-s is believed, and the American writer, who with his wife spent a week on the island, mingled freely with the patients, and before they left knew scores of them by sight and name. Cleanliness seems to be the only precaution necessary, and doctors and others, after having been amongst lepers, merely wash their hands and faces with mildly antiseptic soap, and change their coats. All the horror with which the unfortunates were formerly regarded seems to be a thing of the past. The two resident physicians and their wives live at the settlement, and at a rifle match at which the American visitors were present, lepers and non-lepers used the same guns, and rubbed shoulders in the confined space of the shooting booth. Molokai has a delightful climate and magnificent scenery. Over the grassy pastures roam liurrdreds of horses owned oy lepers, and in the harbour are fishing boats and a steam launch, also belonging to patients wlio make money by selling the fish they catch. Despite their disease the lepers form a happy colony of nearly 1000, souls, with two villages and numerous country ,and seaside homes, i'hey have six churches, a Young Men's Christian Association building, several asss(mbly-halls, a band-stand, a race track, baseball grounds, and shooting ranges, an athletic club, many glee clubs, and two brass bands. "They are so contented down there," Mr. Pinkham, the president of the Board of Health, told Mr. London, "that you can't drive them away with a shot gun." An amusing stoiy is told of a mischievous negro whom the superintendent tried hard to get rid of, as he was declared not to be ti leper. But he wished to stay, married an old woman in the last stage of leprosy, and petitioned the Board of Health for permission to remain and nur&e his sick wife. He was twice deported, and was threatened with fine and imprisonment if he came back again. when the superintendent comes W Honolulu, the negro, who had been a boot-black, poli&hes his boots, and says to him : — "Say, boss, I lost a good home down there. Yessir, I lost a good home." Then he whispers, "Say, boss, can't I go back? Can't you fix it for me so as I can go back?" He had lived nine years on Molokai, and had had there the best time of his life. Mr. London asserts that the leper in the settlement is far better off than the leper skulking outside. He declares that if he had to choose he would rather live at Molokai for the rest of his life than in the East End of London, the east side of New York, or the stockyards of Chicago. As showing how feebly contagious is leprosy, he mentions the case of a woman now at Molokai, who has lived there many years, has had five leper husbands, had children by them, and is to-day, as she hns always been, entirely free from the disease.

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