LEPROSY NO LONGER INCURABLE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 71, 23 February 1937, Page 9

LEPROSY NO LONGER INCURABLE.

MEDICAL MISSIONARY’S CLAIM. Leprosy can no longer be classed as ail incurable disease, according to Dr. T. Howard Somervell, the former Mount Everest climber, who has tor more than tnirteen years l>eeu a medical missionary at Aeyyoor, in Travailcore, Southern India. “At the present time,” Dr. Somervell states, “we can practically guarantee a cure foi every iepei who has not had his complaint for more than five years.” . Dr. Somervell’s claim, made in his book, “After Everest,” is based on bis experience of- the new “hydrocarpus oil” treatment for leprosy, which he states has “become a really wonderful thing.” “Some of the advanced cases, he comments, “will never get a chance of a cure, but the earlier and slighter cases will every one see their homes again, if they adhere faithfully to the treatment. “It may take a long time —six months, a year, even two years but so long as the disease has not been established for more than four or five years, the patient has every chanoe of going home again with a certificate in his pocket saying that he is free from all danger to his fellow men. Dr. Somervell also tells of a strangely silent strike of lepers with which lie successfully dealt by the simple expedient of telling all lepers, exoept the ringleader, that if they did not want to be treated they could go Pome—and that the ringleader must go home. . “After Everest” is an unusually frankly and freshly written autobiography by a most unusual man, says the London Morning Post. His account of Indian medical missionary work in general is arresting, and his Everest experiences—he is one of only five men who have climbed to 28,000 feet—must inevitably attract interest.