120 JOURNAL OF THE TRINIDAD 



"■ ways, in. air, food, water, &c, or it may have been in his family. 

 " True, the man was ascertained so far as possible to come of a 

 " clean family, and he has been isolated in gaol since the inocu- 

 lation. Still any one who has attempted to take the statement 

 " of lepers will appreciate the value of family history, and in a 

 " country where leprosy is rampant are we sure that it can be 

 " shut out by four walls 1 I repeat what I said in my last report 

 " that an experiment of this kind to be scientifically perfect 

 " must be performed in a country free from leprosy, and in an 

 " individual who has never left that country and whose imme- 

 " diate ancestors have always stayed at home. Even if we admit 

 " the worst that the disease is directly inoculable beneath the 

 " skin in some cases, it is no argument that it is contagious in 

 " the ordinary sense of the term like typhus fever or small-pox." 

 During this year the percentage of deaths 7 '±7 was the lowest 

 ever noted in the Leper Asylum, and Dr. Bake added probably 

 many other Leper Asylums. He goes on : " There were no 

 " deaths from dysentery during the year and the cases were 

 " trifling in number and severity. When we remember that dysen- 

 " tery was raging in the district where the Asylum stands we 

 " have, I think, an argument in favour of the late epidemic hav- 

 " ing been at least aggravated by neglect of proper food and 

 " cleanliness. It must not be forgotten that lepers are very 

 " liable to ulceration of the large intestine. The poison of dys- 

 " entery ought therefore to find with them a peculiarly favour- 

 able nidus." During this year many experiments were made 

 in cultivation of bacillus lepra; and he arrives at the following 

 conclusions : " An inquiry of this kind is practically endless, 

 " so varied are the conditions of temperature, time, nutriment, 

 " medium, living animal tissue, or putrescent substance and so 

 " many are the observations necessary to avoid or lessen the risk 

 " of errors of experiment, such as they are, however, my con- 

 " elusions are the result of four years' work, and I here sum- 

 " marise them: — (1) At a tropical temperature and on the 

 " ordinary nutrient media I have failed to grow bacillus lepra;. 

 " (2) In all animals yet examined I have failed to find any local 

 " growth or general dissemination of the bacillus after inocula- 

 " tion, whether beneath the skin, in the abdominal cavity, or in 

 " the anterior chamber. Feeding with leprous tissues has also 

 " given negative results. (3) I have found no growth of the 

 " bacillus lepra; when placed in putrid fluids or buried in the 

 "earth." In the report of February 1890, he returns to the 

 "burning question of the day," the question of contagion, to 

 which an impetus had been given by the death of the hero- 

 martyr Father Damien, the discovery of a leper selling meat in 

 Whitechapel, Dr. Abraham's paper before the Epidemiological 

 Society, and the formation of the Leprosy Committee and National 



