LEPROSY AND THE LEPER 

 SETTLEMENT ON MOLOKAL 



In 1865, the Hawaiian Legislature, recognizing the disas- 

 trous fact that leprosy is at once contagious and incurable, 

 passed an act to prevent its spread, and eventually the Board 

 of Health established a leper settlement on the island of 

 Molokai for the isolation of lepers. In carrying out the painful 

 task of weeding out and exiling the sufferers, the officials em- 

 ployed met with unusual difficulties ; and the general foreign 

 community was not itself aware of the importance of making 

 an attempt to "stamp out" the disease, until the beginning of 

 Lunalilo's reign, when the apparently rapid spread of leprosy, 

 and sundry rumours that others than natives were affected by 

 it, excited general alarm, and not unreasonably, for medical 

 science, after protracted investigation, knows less of leprosy 

 than of cholera. Nor are medical men wholly agreed as to 

 the manner in which infection is communicated ; and, as the 

 white residents on the islands associate very freely and inti- 

 mately with the natives, eating poi out of their calabashes, and 

 sleeping in their houses and on their mats, there was just cause 

 for uneasiness. 



The natives themselves have been, and still are, perfectly 

 reckless about the risk of contagion, and although the family 

 instinct among them is singularly weak, the gregarious or social 

 instinct is singularly strong, and it has been found impossible 

 to induce them to give up smoking the pipes, wearing the 

 clothes, and sleeping on the mats of lepers, which three things 

 are universally regarded by medical men as undoubted sources 

 of infection. At the beginning of 1873, it was estimated that 

 nearly 400 lepers were scattered up and down the islands, 

 living among their families and friends, and the healthy asso- 



