748 



Leprosy- 



analogous to tuberculin. With it he treated a number of lepers 

 at the Leper Hospital at Rangoon, Burmah, many of whom greatly 

 improved and some of whom seemed to be cured. Confirmation of 

 the work by others is greatly desired. 



Sanitation. — While not so contagious as tuberculosis, it has 

 been proved that leprosy is transmissible, and it may be regarded 

 as an essential sanitary precaution that lepers should be segregated 

 and mingle as little as possible with healthy persons. The disease 

 is not hereditary, so that there is no reason why lepers should not 

 marry among themselves. The children should, however, be taken 

 from the parents lest they be subsequently infected. 



Fig. 292.— A .case of lepra nodosa treated in the Medico-Chirurgical Hospital of 



Philadelphia. 



Rat Leprosy ' 



In 1903 Stefansky* reported the occurrence of a disease of rats that bore a 

 striking resemblance to lepra of man, and was caused by a very similar acid-fast 

 bacillus. Many others have since confirmed his observations. The disease ap- 

 pears to be wide-spread among rats, its distribution seeming to bear no reference 

 to the presence or absence of human leprosy, so that no connection between the 

 epidemiology^ of the two can be traced. That the two depend upon similar 

 micro-organisms is not only shown by the morphological and tinctorial resem- 

 blances between the two, but also by the fact that the serum of each will give 

 complement fixation reactions with the organisms from the other. 



*Centralbl. f. Bakt. u. Parasitenk, 1903, Orig., xxxm, p. 481. 



