10 THE ETHNOGRAPHY OF LEPROSY, ETC. 



partout les plus eprouvees, en Afrique comine en Oceanie et en 

 Amerique. Les races jaunes, bien qu'infectees a i;n haut degre, 

 semble deja nioins accessibles a la maladie, et, chez elles, les 

 centres endeniiqnes tendent a se limiter, a se retrecir. La 

 frequence d'ailleurs variable de la lepre parmi les Malais, les 

 Indochinois et les Hindous, n'est pas sans doiite depourvue de 

 toute relation avec la nature et le degre des croisements subis 

 par ces peuples. Les Maures et les Arabes entretiennent la 

 maladie parmi eux, en raison de leurs unions nombreuses avec 

 les femmes de race noire ; mais les Juifs, ne s'aillent qu'entre 

 eux, ne sont pas moins sujets a la lepre." 



Our experience is exactly tbe contrary of tbis statement. 

 So far from tbe black races being the most leprous, and the 

 yellow the least, over the great area we are dealing with, the 

 black races are quite free from Leprosy, except where as in Fiji, 

 it has been recently introduced ; and the yellow race, the Chinese, 

 is the leper and the distributor of Leprosy. We proceed to 

 demonstrate this. 



A glance at the map shows that there are only two centres 

 of intense Leprosy in the whole of the Pacific basin — the provin- 

 ces of Kwantung and Fokien in China, and Hawaii in the 

 distant Pacific. We shall see that Hawaii was infected from 

 China. As we go south and east from what we will call, for 

 brevity's sake the Kwantung centre. Leprosy spreads with 

 diminished vigour, attaining a sub-focus in Moluccas. The 

 disease is more intense in Tonkin than further south, and in 

 Sumatra and Java it is so rare, and of so mild a type, that the 

 Netherlands government, who having colonies both in the West 

 and East Indies, both leprous, and who have dealt with the 

 disease in a most enlightened manner, have from experience 

 given up all the restrictive measures with which they started iii 

 the East Indies, while they maintain them in all their rigour in 

 the West Indies. 



Neither in Indo-China, the Straits, or inthe Dutch, Spanish, 

 or Portuguese islands have we been able to find a particle of 

 evidence that the aboriginal tribes ever were, or are now leprous. 



If we again refer to the map and consider the portion 

 coloured blue, which shows the area from which we have evidence 



