The old horrors of leprosy go back to the conditions that obtained before the days of antiseptic surgery, and before the time when physicians like Dr.Goodhue and Dr.Hollmann went to live at the Settlement.Dr.Goodhue is the pioneer surgeon there, and too much praise cannot be given him for the noble work he has done.I spent one morning in the operating room with him and of the three operations he performed, two were on men, newcomers, who had arrived on the same steamer with me.In each case, the disease had attacked in one spot only.One had a perforating ulcer in the ankle, well advanced, and the other man was suffering from a similar affliction, well advanced, under his arm.Both cases were well advanced because the man had been on the outside and had not been treated.In each case.Dr.Goodhue put an immediate and complete stop to the ravage, and in four weeks those two men will be as well and able-bodied as they ever were in their lives.The only difference between them and you or me is that the disease is lying dormant in their bodies and may at any future time commit another ravage.
Leprosy is as old as history.References to it are found in the earliest written records.And yet to-day practically nothing more is known about it than was known then.This much was known then, namely, that it was contagious and that those afflicted by it should be segregated.The difference between then and now is that to-day the leper is more rigidly segregated and more humanely treated.But leprosy itself still remains the same awful and profound mystery.Areading of the reports of the physicians and specialists of all countries reveals the baffling nature of the disease.These leprosy specialists are unanimous on no one phase of the disease.They do not know.In the past they rashly and dogmatically generalized.
They generalize no longer.The one possible generalization that can be drawn from all the investigation that has been made is that leprosy is FEEBLY CONTAGIOUS.But in what manner it is feebly contagious is not known.They have isolated the bacillus of leprosy.They can determine by bacteriological examination whether or not a person is a leper; but they are as far away as ever from knowing how that bacillus finds its entrance into the body of a non-leper.They do not know the length of time of incubation.They have tried to inoculate all sorts of animals with leprosy, and have failed.
They are baffled in the discovery of a serum wherewith to fight the disease.And in all their work, as yet, they have found no clue, no cure.Sometimes there have been blazes of hope, theories of causation and much heralded cures, but every time the darkness of failure quenched the flame.A doctor insists that the cause of leprosy is a long-continued fish diet, and he proves his theory voluminously till a physician from the highlands of India demands why the natives of that district should therefore be afflicted by leprosy when they have never eaten fish, nor all the generations of their fathers before them.A man treats a leper with a certain kind of oil or drug, announces a cure, and five, ten, or forty years afterwards the disease breaks out again.It is this trick of leprosy lying dormant in the body for indeterminate periods that is responsible for many alleged cures.But this much is certain: ASYET THERE HAS BEEN NO AUTHENTIC CASE OF A CURE.
Leprosy is FEEBLY CONTAGIOUS, but how is it contagious? An Austrian physician has inoculated himself and his assistants with leprosy and failed to catch it.But this is not conclusive, for there is the famous case of the Hawaiian murderer who had his sentence of death commuted to life imprisonment on his agreeing to be inoculated with the bacillus leprae.Some time after inoculation, leprosy made its appearance, and the man died a leper on Molokai.Nor was this conclusive, for it was discovered that at the time he was inoculated several members of his family were already suffering from the disease on Molokai.He may have contracted the disease from them, and it may have been well along in its mysterious period of incubation at the time he was officially inoculated.Then there is the case of that hero of the Church, Father Damien, who went to Molokai a clean man and died a leper.There have been many theories as to how he contracted leprosy, but nobody knows.He never knew himself.But every chance that he ran has certainly been run by a woman at present living in the Settlement; who has lived there many years; who has had five leper husbands, and had children by them;and who is to-day, as she always has been, free of the disease.
As yet no light has been shed upon the mystery of leprosy.When more is learned about the disease, a cure for it may be expected.
Once an efficacious serum is discovered, and leprosy, because it is so feebly contagious, will pass away swiftly from the earth.The battle waged with it will be short and sharp.In the meantime, how to discover that serum, or some other unguessed weapon? In the present it is a serious matter.It is estimated that there are half a million lepers, not segregated, in India alone.Carnegie libraries, Rockefeller universities, and many similar benefactions are all very well; but one cannot help thinking how far a few thousands of dollars would go, say in the leper Settlement of Molokai.The residents there are accidents of fate, scapegoats to some mysterious natural law of which man knows nothing, isolated for the welfare of their fellows who else might catch the dread disease, even as they have caught it, nobody knows how.Not for their sakes merely, but for the sake of future generations, a few thousands of dollars would go far in a legitimate and scientific search after a cure for leprosy, for a serum, or for some undreamed discovery that will enable the medical world to exterminate the bacillus leprae.
There's the place for your money, you philanthropists.