1044 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION I. 
themselves to work as ‘free boys” at the plantations, or else 
could set up in some semi-labouring business. Whichever they 
did, the free boys were at liberty to travel about the country, 
and were not infrequently employed as house-servants. In all 
the territories the Chinese, and in Queensland the kanakas as 
well, were pretty equally diffused among the whites all over each 
territory, and were in free occasional or business contact with 
them. 
From this review of the general conditions of life, it is necessary 
to turn to the recorded occurrences of lepra. Before doing this 
it should be noticed that an epidemiological study of the present 
kind can be made only if two conditions are first fulfilled : one is, 
that the information at command shall be complete enough to 
furnish a true outline (at least) of the course followed by the 
disease among the people which is the subject of study ; the other, 
that there shall be reasonably good evidence that the patients 
reported to have suffered in former years from the disease under 
examination really presented cases of that disease. In the present 
instance it is my opinion that the first condition has been fulfilled ; 
the second has probably been sufficiently well fulfilled, but with 
this exception: that while it is plain enough (from published 
accounts, photographs, and in one case proficiency in the observer, 
within my own knowledge of him, &c.) that the cases of lepra 
alleged to have occurred were cases of lepra in reality, it is, on 
the other hand, almost certain that many additional cases have 
either escaped recognition altogether, or else were never put on 
record. Here, also, it seems proper to point out that while the 
diagnosis of lepra only occasionally presents difficulties which 
cannot be resolved by an attentive student who has enjoyed 
sufficient opportunities of making himself familiar with the varied 
clinical aspects under which the disease shows itself, yet it is 
notorious that persons who in other respects are highly competent, 
but who have not had the opportunities referred to, very often 
indeed overlook or misapprehend examples of the disease whose 
identification presents in reality no difficulty at all, and even deny 
or dispute that they are cases of lepra when that explanation of 
them is suggested. It is most important to remember this, and it 
should be specially borne in mind when the negative statements 
of travellers, both medical and lay, are under consideration. The 
assertion of a known proficient that he met with no cases during 
his exploratory travels is good, as far as it goes at all events; a 
similar statement from one of whose proficiency there is no 
evidence is worth nothing at all. 
As regards lepra among the Australians, it is necessary to divide 
them into primeval autochthons unaffected by immigration, and 
those affected by immigration, who may be called aboriginals for 
the sake of distinction. Concerning the primeval autochthons 
