PART II. J Duration of Leprosy, and Question of its Contagiousness. 473 



With regard to the question of duration, these figures are of course very insufficient, 

 as they do not show duration to the termination of the disease, but only to time 

 of examination. Unfortunately, however, they constitute all the information which 

 is at present attainable on the subject from the Almora Asylum. It is only quite 

 recently that information regarding the date of attack has been registered, or that 

 the cases have been discriminated according to the form of disease, so that nothing 

 can be obtained from the past history of the institution. In the failure, then, of 

 better evidence on the subject, we are driven to take the length of residence in 

 \h.Q Asylum. There is no evidence to show that tubercular leprosy has latterly 

 increased in frequency as compared with the anaesthetic form of the disease, so as 

 to have caused the entrance of a disproportionate number of cases into the Asylum 

 within recent years, and none that there is a tendency among the sufferers from 

 any special form of the disease to desert the institution, so that the average duration 

 of cases at present in the x\sylum probably represents the actual relations existing 

 in this respect between the various forms of the disease. The want of previous 

 records is more likely to give origin to serious fallacy in attempting to calculate 

 the relative frequency of the occurrence of the different forms of disease, for those 

 of the latter whose duration is longest are likely to furnish an accumulation of 

 cases of survival giving rise to an appearance of relative prevalence greater than 

 actually exists. 



The figures as they stand advance evidence of their correctness by agreeing 

 with those obtained in other places in showing the much shorter duration of the 

 tubercular as compared with the ansesthetic form. 



In regard to the case with a duration of forty years, it was very difficult to 

 determine whether the patient was, at the time of examination, suffering from 

 actual disease or only from the effects of that which had formerly been present ; save 

 slight ulceration of the soles of the feet, there were no symptoms but those ascribable 

 to former nervous injury and muscular atrophy. The short duration of the eruptive 

 cases corresponds with the initial character of the symptom as a manifestation of the 

 disease. 



7. — T}ie evidence which the Asylum affords on Contagion. 



The theory that leprosy is a contagious disease has in recent years been revived 

 in some quarters, and a careful inquiry was therefore made for any evidence bearing 

 on the point. The means which most naturally suggested itself for doing so was 

 an examination of the history of all the married lepers, for were the result of this 

 to show that the wives or husbands, as the case might be, of lepers, suffer frequently 

 from the disease, this would be some evidence in favour of contagion, except in 

 cases in which the marriage was demonstrated to be one contracted between lepers, 

 or in which there was a family history of leprosy for both the contracting parties. 

 Even with these limitations, evidence of this nature collected in a district in which 



