1900 THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS 155 



for themselves, one white man only, besides the doctors, 

 living with them. Their establishment consists of sundry 

 long, low, thatched sheds, cool, clean and fairly convenient. 

 They have their own compounds, reading-room, cook-house, 

 &.C., but they are not confined in any way, and can wander at 

 will over the island. The female lepers have a small settle- 

 ment to themselves a mile or so away. The year before my 

 visit the Cape Parliament passed a law giving the autho- 

 rities power to remove lepers compulsorily. When I 

 was there all the lepers were natives except two men and 

 one woman, and the males were to the females in the 

 proportion of about three to one. 



The Superintendent, Dr Dixon, said things were very 

 different indeed now to what they were only a compara- 

 tively short time ago. All the doctors here have the 

 very strongest belief that leprosy is not contagious or 

 infectious, except perhaps in one special way. At any 

 rate they assert most positively that no case of communi- 

 cated leprosy has ever occurred on the island, even not- 

 withstanding the degree of inter-communication that has 

 always existed between the lepers and the other in- 

 habitants. They believe it is inherited in the blood, and 

 is also developed in some mysterious way. They had 

 lately been trying Gurgun oil (produced from a fir tree in 

 the Andaman Isles), but they have not yet had time to 

 give it a fair trial, for which a period of three years is 

 said to be necessary ; and it is difficult to get the stomach 

 to retain it in sufficiently large doses. They say, however, 

 that in some cases it certainly has arrested the course of 

 the disease. The disease, however, sometimes seems from 

 no discoverable reason to arrest itself. I saw a man who 

 had been on the island over 30 years, and they said he 

 was no worse than he was 20 years ago. Another man 

 of 94 was there, and his condition had remained unchanged 

 for years. 



