38 
the chief reasons I got from a medical man in Norway for 
the existence on its West Coast of so much leprosy, viz., 
bad food—principally fish—exposure, scanty clothing, want 
of cleanliness. Dr. Gavin Milroy, in a conversation I had 
with him, supported these reasons, explaining further that, 
on inquiry on the subject, he was informed that some 
Norwegians of the lower orders prefer tainted to fresh fish. 
Again, on the contrary, in the discussion of a case of reco- 
very from leprosy, by Mr. Jonathan Hutchinson, reported 
in the ‘Lancet, Feb. 15th, 1879, it is reported that Sir 
Joseph Fayrer said that if “the eating of putrid and decom- 
posing fish were a cause of leprosy, then the whole of the 
inhabitants of British Burmah and the Malayan peninsula 
ought to suffer from leprosy, for that was their most 
favoured food. But leprosy was almost unknown in these 
countries ; whereas it abounds ‘in the Himalayas, where, as 
Mr. Macnamara had stated, fish eating did not and could 
not prevail. . . . Certainly in India leprosy was not due to 
fish diet.” 
Whether the disease be due to fish eating, its importation, 
surrounding circumstances of social condition, exposure, 
innutritious diet, malarial prevalence, seaside localities, the 
bacillus, its introduction into the system through the 
medium of putrid food, or by mosquito bite, is beyond my 
unprofessional power to advance ; in fact it would be pre- 
sumptuous on my part to even risk an opinion. The question 
seems yet a moot one, and, with reference to the disease, Dr. 
Erasmus Wilson has advanced, I think, in 1881, that the 
question of cause “must still remain unsettled until further 
information is obtainable. A specific form of bacillus has 
recently been found in leprosy, the lymphatics being 
believed to be the channels of infection.” 
Recent researches, according to Drs. Fox in the ‘ Epitome 
