786 
PKOCEEDINGS OF SECTION I. 
harmless in themselves, it may be — which gives those bacteria their 
surest opportunity of evading the natural defenders of the body against 
them. Thus, if we supposed for a moment that concurrence of some 
other sort of organism with the B. leprce were necessary to successful 
implantation of the latter, we could understand how it might happen 
that of all the people living on a tract of country freely infested with 
the cause of lepra only a few would become lepers. Do not forget 
that all this is but speculation as regards leprosy. I think it is surely 
founded on ascertained epidemiological facts ; but through experiment 
alone can the superstructure be safely raised. 
When I framed this communication I had no intention of pro- 
ducing a mere polemic. Probably that is evident from what has now 
been said ; and in that case you will, perhaps, have been surprised 
that I have but little referred to the course of leprosy in Australia. 
I presume that each of the five Governments took the rational 
precaution of ascertaining what that course had been before enacting 
the extremely severe laws against the liberty of lepers which they have 
adopted, and at this moment enforce in five colonies — before they 
ventured to add the remarkable hardship of imprisonment for life to 
the affliction of incurable disease. I cannot suppose that they failed 
to do this, although no evidence of it has ever come to light; for I 
will not suppose that with ample medical advice at their command 
they treated their people like chattels, and as though, if in those 
enactments they should ultimately find they had fallen into error, 
they could defend themselves by airily alleging that at all events their 
mistake had been on the right side. I will not for a moment entertain 
a supposition so injurious— injurious not merely to Governments, 
but to the people who otherwise acquiesced in a flagrant infringement 
on personal liberty. Doubtless, the facts regarding leprosy over the 
world in general, and particularly the facts regarding leprosy in 
Australia, were carefully gathered and critically examined before so 
momentous a step was taken as that which declared that every leper 
should for the future be rigorously imprisoned for as long as his 
incurable malady should permit him to survive — that he himself and 
all his family should for ever suffer because it was essential to the 
public good. 
And yet the people, and yet you yourselves, do not know the 
precise grounds on which those enactments were based ; you do not 
in the least know what the course of leprosy in Australia has been; 
you cannot tell whether it has been such as manifestly supports, or 
merely fails to support, or manifestly contradicts the belief that 
leprosy is maintained by communication with lepers. Dor want of 
that information the salient characteristic of those laws must seem, 
in the eyes of some, to be renascence in the 19th century of the 
product of mediaeval ignorance into mediawal egoism. Should not the 
strong evidence which, no doubt, exists in the archives of one or more 
of the five Governments to show that the practice of the Middle Ages 
was wise and indispensable, and therefore still is necessary in Australia, 
be now — though late — produced to us ? 
