CHAPTER XII. 



Leprosy. 



Distribution of Leprosy— Similarity to Tuberculosis — Description of Dis- 

 ease — Tubercular, Anaesthetic, Mixed — The Leprosy Bacillus — Method 

 of Staining — Position — Leprosy Cells — Bacilli Resistant and Grow 

 Slowly — Cultivation Experiments Mostly Negative — Theories of Cause 

 of Leprosy. 



Within the last fewyearsleprosy has, metaphorically speaking, 

 returned to life in this country. The occurrence of a case in 

 one of our market attendants has created more commotion, and 

 has put in train a more complicated machinery, than phthisis, 

 with its thousands and tens of thousands of victims was for 

 long able to set going. Nevertheless, we can now afford to 

 think of leprosy as almost a thing of the past, as far as our 

 own country is concerned, although we still come across 

 traces of its sojourn amongst us in our Libertons, or Leper 

 towns, or Leptons, that indicate only too surely that this 

 disease was looked upon with the greatest dread by our 

 ancestors of the Middle Ages, who evidently took pains 

 to keep in their own regions, and within their own asylums, 

 the lepers of that period. With the exception of certain 

 isolated areas along the shores of Spain, and in Portugal, 

 in Norway, some parts of Sweden and Iceland, in Italy, 

 Reumania, and Hungary, in the Balkan Peninsula, and in 

 Greece where the disease is still endemic, leprosy is now 

 rarely seen in Europe ; but in certain parts of Asia and 

 Africa it is still frequently met with. It is found doing its 

 fell work in the Sandwich Islands, in Mexico, in Cuba, in some 

 parts of Central America, in the north-east of South America, 

 and in the Argentine Republic, in the north-east and north- 

 west of Africa, in Guinea, and in Cape Colony, and in Mada- 

 gascar, along the shores of the Black Sea, in Persia, Arabia, 

 India, China, the Malay Archipelago, Japan, in Asia, and in 

 New Zealand. 



