1040 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION I. 
No. 1.—ON THE HISTORY AND PREVALENCE OF 
LEPRA IN AUSTRALIA. 
By J. Asupurton THompson, M.D., D.P.H., Chief Medical Officer 
of the Government, and President of the Board of Health, of 
New South Wales ; Examiner in Hygiene at the University 
of Sydney ; Fellow of the Royal Institute of Public Health. 
Honorary Fellow of the Incorporated Society of Medical Officers 
of Health. 
(Read Friday, January 7, 1898.) 
[Tue following paper contains a summary of the more important 
parts of “A Contribution to the History of Leprosy in Australia.” 
which was written in 1894, and published by the National Leprosy 
Fund in the middle of 1897 ; to which reference must be made 
for the detailed evidence on which the statements recapitulated 
in it rest. | 
Australia had been often sighted by navigators before Captain 
Cook landed and took possession on behalf of the English Govern- 
ment in 1770 ; but the first foreign settlement in the country was 
effected by an expedition which numbered about 1,030 souls, at 
Botany Bay, near Sydney, in 1788. The whole continent had, it is 
believed, been free from intrusion in every part down to that date, 
with the following possible exceptions: In 1837-9 Sir George 
Grey, Governor of South Australia, discovered some rock-drawings 
which were judged to be of other than aboriginal execution, at a 
point near the north-western coast line ; and on the north coast, 
Flinders, issuing from the Gulf of Carpentaria, encountered a fleet 
of Malay prahus engaged in tripang fishing, and was told by its 
leader that he was the tirst Malay to reach that coast about twenty 
years before, or about 1783--4. For many years, at all events, the 
aboriginals at this part remained at enmity with their Malay 
visitors, who returned year by year, and, according to the 
available accounts, did not penetrate further than the beaches, 
where they usually had to fight for the wood and water they went 
to secure. 
At discovery by the whites the country was found parcelled 
out among many different small tribes, and it is considered that the 
state of the people must have been what it was found to be in 1788 
for several hundred years before. No information as to absolute 
numbers of the nomad autochthonous population at any part of the | 
country is available for older years, and no trustworthy information 
is available for later times. 
~~ .ee. =  S  e e ee 
