In Bombay there is a club exclusively for ladies called the “Sorosis,” which is presided over by Dr. E. B. Ryder, an American lady with a kind heart, a clear head, and a great love for all the members of her own sex. She received me most kindly when I called on her. She seemed so interested in my work among the Calcutta lepers, that I sent her a portion of this book in manuscript to read. On the following day she called to ask me if I would go to the Sorosis Club and tell the ladies, about twenty in number, who would be assembled there to meet me, of my work among the lepers. I had a most attentive and sympathetic audience of kind-hearted ladies on this occasion, all of whom shed tears when I told them of the grateful kindness of the poor lepers to me, and of their sad and lonely life. One lady took the address of Archdeacon Michell, and promised to try and send some money for my friends, and so keep in touch with them. Dr. Ryder said that if I were to lecture in England on their behalf, I would get money; and that I carried my audience with my earnestness in telling my story. I need hardly say that I would be only too happy to take her hint, if I could work it out effectively.
Dr. Ryder and the kind-hearted ladies of the Sorosis Club, in wishing me good-bye, expressed a desire that copies of this book should be sent to them as soon as it was published, and heartily wished me “God speed” in my work. It was very soothing to my feelings to receive kindness and offers of help in work for which I had suffered so many rebuffs. When I embarked on board the SS. Calabria, which was to take us home, I felt that with their kind words in my ears I could sit down and work at my book with renewed vigour, feeling sure that women as kind and sympathetic as my Bombay friends, would read it with interest in England, and that perhaps something might be done for my poor leper friends in Calcutta. When we reached Aden I posted a long letter to Daisy, telling her of what I was doing, and promising to send them something from London. I asked her to cause my letter to be read to Ramey, and the other male lepers, and promised to keep her posted up from time to time in anything that might be of interest to them.
Just as this book is going to press, I have received a letter from Mrs. Grant, who tells me that all the European and Eurasian inmates of the Calcutta Leper Asylum are much in the same way as when I left them, except Ramey, who is very ill, and is not expected to live long. I deeply regret to hear that Mrs. Smith died suddenly of heart disease. The poor lepers lost a kind friend in her. Mrs. Grant is working bravely in this good cause, and has stimulated interest in these helpless sufferers.
CHAPTER XIV.
REMARKS ON LEPROSY.
By Surgeon-Major G. G. MacLaren, M.D.
Leprosy, as is well known, is a disease prevalent all over the world, from Norway and Sweden in the north, to India and China in the east, and to Australia and the Islands of the Southern Seas.
My own personal experience, however, has been limited only to India, where I have had the disease under close observation for nearly twenty years. It would be out of place to enter into any technical or scientific description of its nature and progress in a work of this kind. All are aware that a Commission, composed of five men, most competent to undertake the investigation of the history of the disease in all its bearings, is now sitting in India, and their report, which will be made public at the end of the year, will doubtless give information which will be of the utmost value in establishing means for its amelioration and, probably, ultimate extinction. My service in India has placed me in a district where, unfortunately, leprosy is exceedingly prevalent amongst the native population, although not entirely limited to those alone; for I have had cases of Europeans also to deal with. This led me to take the matter up, more from the hope of relieving suffering than from any other motive, the miserable victims being allowed to wander about as simple beggars, outcasts from their own friends and villages. They thus transform themselves, if not into a danger to their fellow-creatures, at least into a most objectionable nuisance and eye-sore to the whole community. To look upon the streets and roads of an Indian Station on Sunday morning (and this was the manner these wretched creatures adopted to enlist the sympathies of their fellow beings in my own station), lined with rows of lepers, exhibiting their disgusting sores and their maimed and deformed bodies to the public gaze, was a sight that could not fail to touch the hardest and most indifferent heart. To prevent the daily exhibition of these harrowing scenes, I enlisted the sympathy of the general public, and was able, as shown in the report of the Dehra Dun Leper Asylum, mentioned elsewhere in this work, to establish and endow a retreat for all who would take advantage of its comforts and benefits. I had no difficulty whatever in inducing all the afflicted—old and young, men and women—to take up their quarters therein. Before admission, all agree to become permanent residents and to live apart. I had studied with care the beneficial effects of segregation which had been adopted in the retreats in Norway and Sweden, with the marked diminution in the number of cases imported during the decades succeeding the foundation of these institutions, and, acting on this principle, the Dehra Dun Leper Asylum was opened in 1879, and has been in existence ever since. There the sexes are strictly segregated, and the inmates live and are cared for under the most happy conditions. Throughout those years I have had constant opportunity, there, of studying the nature and progress of the disease.
Male Lepers.
[p. 123.]
Being a firm believer in the hereditary transmission of all ailments—or the tendency to them, both mental and physical—I have traced direct transmission in at least thirty per cent. of the cases coming under my observation. The disease is doubtless due, like most others, to the presence of a bacillus in the blood, and if there be not direct transmission of this from parent to child, its effects are undoubtedly hereditary. These, however, are points which I need not discuss, for they will be specially considered by the Leprosy Commissioners. Acting on the strength of my own convictions as to the transmissibility and communicability of leprosy, I established the Dehra Dun Asylum on the principle already noted, and it has answered so far admirably; all its inmates living as happily as they can, under their unfortunate conditions, and ending their existence contentedly! I have had, of course, ample opportunity of studying the nature of the disease, and its effects on the different organs of the body, and in the many examinations I have made, post mortem, I can testify that not a single organ in the whole body is exempt from the attacks and inroads of this dire and loathsome malady. It invades the brain, spinal nerves, the eyes, tongue and throat, the lungs, the liver, and other digestive organs. In addition, as is generally known, it maims and deforms the external parts of the body in a manner too revolting to describe. It is painful to witness the amount of deplorable suffering some of these creatures endure. True it is that many feel but little pain—one of the forms of the disease producing anæsthesia, or insensibility of the parts affected; but this is the case in a few only. The majority suffer in variously painful degrees, according to the organ or part implicated, and it is a mistake to think that their sufferings are little. Many, in the earlier forms of the ailment, lose their sense of sight, smell and taste, and when their lungs or throat is attacked (a common form), their agonies are dreadfully distressing and painful to behold. The inroads of the disease are slow and gradual, which makes it all the more trying, and the painful and lingering death to which most are doomed is a condition that one dreads to dwell on.