NURSED A LEPER

Taranaki Daily News, 22 December 1923, Page 10

NURSED A LEPER

EX-MATRON’S MARTYRDOM. CONTRACTS DREAD DISEASE. The pathetic story of a woman who now lies in isolation in a building near the Wooroloo (Western Australia) Sanatorium, and who is condemned to a slow death by leprosy, has just been revealed. Some years ago the woman was matron in a hospital at Broome, and during her period of service there many men, representing many nations, passed through her hands. In the course of time she came south, and developed a disease which doctors did not feel disposed to diagnose in its early stages. Her daughter had married a medical man, under whose care she remained in a country town for some time, and then, being in a state of great mental anxiety regarding the nature of the disease, she went to Perth and saw the Commissioner of Public Health. The commissioner told her she was suffering from one or two dread diseases, and so far as he could say at the moment, he believed it was leprosy. She was admitted to the hospital, and in the course of a few days the dread sentence of slow death from the terrible malady was made known to her.

“She took the news like a champion,” says the Health Commissioner, and she is now living a lonely life in the place set apart for lepers at Wooroloo. So far as could be learned by the health authorities, the woman had never while at Brome nursed a leper, and a search of the records was made to ascertain whether it was possible any leper may have passed through the institution there without the knowledge of the department. It is now believed that such a man, an oboriginal, was' treated at the hospital, and was nursed by the matron. The native died subsequently, and the woman, who in the outpost of service nursed him in the days of his affliction and contracted the disease, is now left to end her days a leper.