HOPE FOR LEPERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19892, 10 March 1928, Page 8

HOPE FOR LEPERS.

TRIUMPH OP " SCil^tSi ! || ; •% THE MODERN TREATMENT. "DAWN OF A NEW ERA." ... DISEASE MAY DISAPPEAR. ' " After a decade of experiment and experience of recent discoveries and improved treatment methods the day 0 f hope for the leper has dawned," confidently affirms the Misison to in its fifty. 1 third annual report of wOrk in India. Competent authorities estimate that over a million persons in India are suffering from the disease. Nearly ten years have passed since the introduction of the,ehauimoogra oil treatment for leprosy. Dr. R. G. Cochrane, medical adviser to the mission, quotas the following statement from I)r. Muir, of the Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine, one of the. greatest living authorities on tropical diseases:—"l think we have already in our hands a line of treatment which will aid the rapid disappearance of leprosy from India." "It is no exaggeration to say that every case of early leprosy, if treated property, that is, with due attention being gtvea to exercise, good food, and all the other adjuncts to the chaulmoogra treatment, should recover completely from the d»sease. While saying this we have, to recognise that the present-day treatment ol leprosy is by no means perfect, and that in spite of many encouraging resuits, failures are often reported. "But this is only to be expected; for in a disease which runs such a protracted course, the stage at which the patient presents himself for treatment, bis general health, and a hundred and one other factors have to be taken into consideration. Anything which reduces the vitality of the body mitigates against effective treatment. In spite s then, of pessimistic reports that have been issued from time to time, thijre has been no other decade in th« whole history of leprosy when hope has run so high and w;hen the massed results all over the world have justified such optimism. It seems that the, rays of the dawn of a new era have at last appeared to dispel the darkness of the leper's night." In India the mission maintains 37 asylums and assists 23 others, al'l open to every caste and creed, having in al! nearly 7000 patients under its care.