The Spread of Leprosy.

Evening Star, Issue 7412, 6 January 1888, Page 3

The Spread of Leprosy.

In a letter to ' The Times,' Archdeacon Wright calls attention to the rapid spread of leprosy, and to the need for precautionary measures against the disease. He says : " In all parts of the world attention is being directed to leprosy, for this good reason—leprosy is spreading far and wide, ?.nd in some regions with a fearful rapidity. Forty years ago the malady was unknown in California, New Brunswick, the Cape of Good Hope, and the Sandwich Islands ; but now so dominant is the disease that they all have leper settlements and leper hospitals, and in the Sandwich Islands so severe is the visitation that there are 800 lepers segregated at Molokue. The Chinese are swarming all over the world, and living as thoy do, closely packed and careless of all saiiitary protection, their huts are especially calculated to hasten the incubation of a disease the germ of which was brought by them from China. These Celestials mingle freely with Europeans ; indeed so also do the leprous in every quarter of the globe. And what is the result ? Leprosy is showing itself so frequently and so continuously in Europe that the most learned and experienced physicians are becoming alarmed. Leprosy, they maintain, is strictly man's disease, and wherever leperd travel there invariably leprosy is in due season conveyed to their fellow - men. Only a few weeks ago (October 11) Dr Ernest Besnier, addressing the French Academy of Medicine, of which he is a highly distinguished member, gives the following sad and startling facts : —'There is not at this moment in Paris a

niedical mau devoted to dermatology who has not lepers among his patients, and who does not see every year a certain number of new cases—Europeans who have caught their disease in leprous countries, rr inhabitants of such countries trying by change of climate to obtain bodily relief. Every year soldiers, sailors, merchants, sisters of charity, and others bring back with them the malady into France, and in Paris the St. Louis Hospital receives constantly lepers in all stages of the d isease. Only recently M. Vidal received under bis care a soldier who had contracted leprosy in Cayenne, while I myself admitted a sailor who had returned from Madagascar.' The doctor then names several other cases, ending with a young Frenchman who had been employed in the Consolate at Rio Janeiro ; another born at Port-au-Prince, of healthy parents; and an Italian merchant just returned a leper from Buenos Ayrea. The same experience precisely is that of Dr Besnier's colleagues of St. Louis Hospital and of a large number of hydrologists, especially at Bagneres de Luchon, Uriage, La Bourbule, etc.'' In concluding, the Archdeacon states that cases of leprosy are not so rare as is generally supposed. At this moment there are lepers in the hospitals of London, Dublin, and Glasgow.

" Only a match box," remarked Fogg at the theatre the other night, referring to the seats where th 3 young lovers sat. She gave him a clue,—American girl in London to newspaper correspondent: " You are the one who sends little personal items to the Home papers, aren't you ?" London correspondent: "Yes. Going to appear on the stage ?" " Oh, no ; I only want a little msntion in the society department. You see I have bought a hat exactly like that worn Dy the Princess of Wales, and " " Yes ; a little item to the effect that you and the Princess looked equally pretty in the same sort of hat can be brought in very nicely." " Oh, but I want something more pronounced than that, you know!" "Let me see. Well, I can say that at the garden party your hat was exactly like that worn by the Princess, thus showing great similarity of taste, and " " That won't do; it hasn't the, right sort of ring somehow." " You will have to prompt me then." " Just state in a few plain words that as soon as the Princess caught sight of me she rushed off and bought a hat exactly like mine. That's all I want."