UR. J. W. POLTCHEK, 261 



There has never been any doubt as to the contagiousness 

 of leprosy, for in all countries from the earliest time the 

 leper was "unclean," and his clothing and dwelling were 

 equally regarded as contaminated, and all kinds of de- 

 vices were adopted to avoid contagion. He wore a dis- 

 tinguishing costume and carried a bell or clapper with 

 which to warn those he met. He had a separate "borde," 

 or hut, or slept under a hedge. He might not even look 

 into any well or fountain, or drink from any stream but 

 his own. He must keep to leeward of any one whom he 

 might meet or speak to. He had to wear gloves when 

 he passed over a bridge, and could go nowhere without a 

 special license. In the 14th century they were supposed 

 to be associated with the Jews in a horrible plot to poison 

 all the springs, wells and rivers with their blood, and in 

 1321 a fearful massacre of them took place in Prance. 

 At Chinon 160 were burnt in one day, and at Perigord 

 and Languedoc in a plague panic, fires were lighted 

 everywhere and lepers and Jews heaped thereon. One 

 thing is certain, the fears of the people and the means 

 they adopted had the effect of banishing the dread dis- 

 ease from most of the civilized world. Should not we 

 with our fuller knowledge be able to banish a disease so 

 similar 1 



HISTORY. 



Tuberculosis has been known to exist and has been the 

 dread of the human race since the time of Hippocrates, 

 but it has remained for the men of our day to get ac- 

 quainted with it Virchow first accurately described the 

 miliary tubercle about 1860. In 1866 Klenke, in Ger- 

 many, first suggested, and Villemin, in Paris first proved 

 its contagiousness by inoculation, but it remained for 

 Robert Koch, nearly twenty years afterwards, to make 

 ihe final advance by his brilliant discovery of the pro- 

 ducer of tuberculosis. What had been so long sought 

 in vain, the virus which produces tuberculosis, was found 



