NOW SOLVED

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 36, 11 August 1934, Page 5

NOW SOLVED

PROBLEM OF LEPROSY

IF PATIENTS ARE SOON SEEN

BRITISH TRIUMPH

.Leprosy has been known ami feared , for at. least, throe thousand years, it. used to be prevalent in Europe, but it, largely died out here with tbe higher standard of living which became general after the Middle Ages, says a writer in the "Manchester Guardian." Today it is endemic throughout tho Tropics and is particularly severe in warm, damp climates. It is worst in Central and West Africa, in the north of South America, and in a number of tlio Pacific Islands. But the huge populations of India, China, and Japan aro heavily infected, few parts of Africa aro entirely free, and there are pockets of infection in Australia, in North America, and in Europe. The high rate in Norway, and Iceland is notorious.

Until recent years no cure was known. The leper in most countries was a social outcast. The only public measures adopted was compulsory segregation, which at best was of very doubtful value in checking the spread of infection. Transference to a Jepcr colony meant in practice a sentence of lifelong imprisonment under peculiarly unpleasant conditions. Anyone who has road tales of Molokai, even after Father Damicn 's work for the amelioration of local conditions, will realise tliomisery and hopelessness of such a fate?. Consequently wherever compulsory segregation is in -force- t-lio tendency is inevitable for relatives and friends to hide cases of leprosy for years until the development of the symptoms makes further concealment impossible. In most of the old leper colonies the averago duration of the disease on admission was anything from four to eight years. During this time tlio leper has had ample opportunity to infect healthy people with whom he lias come in contact. SLOW PROGRESS. Leprosy is due to a microbe which closely resembles the tubercle bacillus. Indeed, under a microscope the two are practically indistinguishable. It differs from tuberculosis in that it attacks the skin and the nerves rather than the lungs or other internal organs. But the progress of the disease is similarly slow, and in the vast majority of cases it attacks people under the age of 20. After 30 infection is rare. \ Leprosy is actually less infectious than consumptio.n. 'The germ cannot live outside the human body. In SO per cent, of cases infection can bo traced to living in the- same house asa leper over a considerable period, and.in well over 50 per cent, to sharing the same bed. Since anything from several months to many years may elapse before the appearance of the first recognisable symptoms, and many more before the condition reaches, a stage that attracts general attention, it becomes extraordinarily, difficult to check the spread of infection in countries like India and Central Africa. Between liUo and 1017, however, a new treatment for leprosy was worked out in Calcutta. It was largely the discovery of Dr. (now Sir) Leonard Rogers, who found that a series of injections of a substance obtained from an old Indian remedy called chaulmoogra oil, or from the closely-rclatod hydiiocarpus oil, had a marked effect on Ihe symptoms, particularly if the disease was caught in its'eavlier stages. Fifteen years' experience has1 left no doubt Of'the value of this treatment. It may take months and even years. It is sometimes painful and usually unpleasant. It cannot restore mutilated limbs or heal the deformities that years of advanced ' leprosy inflict. But if conscientiously persisted in over a long enough period'it will eventually clear up a large majority of early cases, and even some that have reached their second stage. WILL REPORT NOW. The success, of this treatment puts' a new aspect on tho whole problem of leprosy. It is 'now possible to induce lepers to come forward as soon as the first symptoms are recognised, with, a reasonable hope of being cured. Each new case can then be investigated. Tho people with whom tho leper has. come in contact can bo examined at.intervals for a number of years, and any infection lie may have- spread can'thus be checked at its source. It is not always necessary to segregate the patient even during treatment. In many early cases of nerve leprosy there arc- no open sores, tho disease is not yet infectious, and these cases can be treated as outpatients at an ordinary hospital without undue danger to tho community. In this way the incidence of leprosy in a given: region can be very considerably reduced in as short a period as ten years. The most striking,.-example to .date- is in tho island of Nauru. -After three years' work along scientific linns tho "number of lepers in the island was reduced by 40 per cent. A year later one-half of tho infective cases had been cleared up and the disease was under control. An experiment on, a more advanced scale was made possible in the Southern-Sudan by using the organisation sot up to examine tho population for sleeping sickness.- Hero no less than 0500, or 3 per cent, of flic population, wore found to 'have- leprosy. Thirty square miles of lifcld were set aside for a leper colony for the 4800 infectious eases. They grew their own crops and wero largely self-supporting during treatment. By tho end of 1032 2230 liad already been discharged free from all signs of leprosy. POSSIBLE AT LAST. .These aro only small examples. The task of eliminating leprosy from tho entire British Empire is an enormous undertaking. But it has now for the first tinio como withinthe bounds of possibility.' During the last ten years the British Empire Leprosy Belief Association, with an income of only about £5000 por annum at its disposal, has already done'a great dealt in promoting, research, distributing information to doctors working in the Tropics, and supplying over half a million doses of "nlcpol" a. year for the treatment of patients. It has recently-interested Toe II in the project, and they propose to go ahead with the work as rapidly as funds and Government co-operation can bo obtained. Wo have moved far from the days of Father Damien, when leprosy or the thought of leprosy meant only horror and despair. A scientific method of dealing with the scourge has been found and tested. There remains the administrative problem—to put that method conscientiously into practice over at least two-thirds of the inhabited world.

For tlio first time in nearly thirty years, the Marchese Marconi recently visited tho ■ villa where, in 1896, as a young man of twenty-two, he- perfected wireless. The villa, called "Grifone," is eight miles from Bologna, where- he received an honorary degree- from the university of that city. With his wife th.B Marches© climbed to the garret in which, as a dreamer, he sought to do great things with the Hertzian wave. Meanwhile, an off-shoot of his research, the Tarlio was sending its daily programmes of information mul entertainment into homes and public places all over the world.