Now as to leprosy itself. No one knows what it is. It is classified according to its manifestations. Delve we never so far into the remoteness of antiquity, we will find records of leprosy. Fifteen hundred years before Christ, it was widely known in the delta and valley of the Nile. It flourished throughout the Middle Ages. To-day it is common in Asia, Africa, South p133 America, the West Indies, and certain isolated localities of Europe. Little was known of it in the ancient days; but little is known of it now. It is parasitic—that much is certain. Dr. Armauer Hansen discovered the bacillus leprae in 1871, but no one has gotten much further than that. Its only alleviation is surgery, but this is sometimes without avail. Leprosy is of three well-defined kinds: There is Running Leprosy, the most horrible of the three. It shows itself mainly as shiny ulcers, which throw off a highly offensive perspiration. In this kind, the fingers, ears, nose, and eyes are often eaten away, leaving a hideous bundle of flesh that but faintly resembles a human being. Dry Leprosy, the second variety, does not take such an offensive form. It resembles a very bad case of eczema, affecting the feet and the hands more than any other part of the body. The skin becomes thick and reddened, while the fleshy part rapidly disappears, leaving the fingers crooked and hard, like claws. The third kind is known as Nervous or Anæsthetic Leprosy. The nerves of the body cease to do their work and become so deadened that a finger could be scraped to the bone with a nutmeg-grater without the least pain. This kind of leprosy makes its victim appear gnarled and twisted as with rheumatism.
The period of incubation is not definitely known. Probably it is some years. Now and then, however, there is a case in which the disease develops with great rapidity, and is steady in its ravages. Various internal p134 remedies have been tried, among them chaulmoogra oil, arsenic, salicylate of soda, salol, and chlorate of potash. While these prove of efficacy in some cases, there has never been a well-authenticated case of cure. Years may pass before the proper remedial agent shall have been discovered.
One of the most interesting spots in the island is the grave of Father Damien, the name in religion of Joseph de Veuster. In the days when segregation on Molokai was first being tried out, many of the lepers sent to the island were in an advanced stage of the disease and were consequently helpless. Being unable to take care of themselves, they lived in misery for years. Some of the deported unfortunates were too feeble to build themselves grass houses, and lived like wild beasts, anywhere they could find shelter. At this time, the young Belgian missionary, Father Damien, undertook to assume spiritual charge over the lepers. He worked for several years in the Settlement, and with his own hands built huts for those unable to build their own. He nursed the advanced cases, and with the help of the stronger lepers dug drainage canals, and took off the malarial water which had been a curse up to this time. He asked small donations from the government, which were reluctantly given, and he persuaded several other priests and two nuns to help him, and gradually built up the present sanitary Settlement, which has more perfect conditions p135 for sick people than any sanitarium, hospital, or detention camp in the world.
After about ten years of the most noble work any missionary ever attempted, Father Damien contracted leprosy, and for the next twelve years was not allowed to leave the island. But he carried out the work he started, and during the last months of his life, when he was one mass of gnarled, decaying flesh, he lay in his bed directing that his work go on as it had when he was well to oversee it. And on the day that he died, he asked to be brought out in the open air, that he might see the fruit of his labours—the thing for which he had given up his life. To-day, none can deny this man honour. He was a hero. By his sacrifice, he has been and will be for years to come the means of saving the lives of others. The United States government gladly took up the work that he laid down unfinished, and Molokai is now better managed than Father Damien, in his most optimistic dreams, might have hoped. It is good to know that when, not long after, a calumniator took up his pen to make light of the work of the dead priest, and to vilify him personally, Robert Louis Stevenson, himself a great writer and a great man, was there with all his energy in the defense.
Leprosy is often accompanied by elephantiasis; in fact, some medical authorities use the terms synonymously for the same disease. All through the South p136 Seas, where lepers and elephantiasis victims mingle with the other natives in their villages, the ones afflicted with elephantiasis are looked upon with more horror than the ones with leprosy, as the natives say elephantiasis is more catching, and that it develops more rapidly. At one island I was on, in the Society Group, it is estimated that one-tenth of the population has elephantiasis, or fey-fey, as they call it. Leprosy is not painful until it reaches an acute stage, but elephantiasis is accompanied by considerable pain from the first forming of the tumor, which tumor sometimes weighs one hundred pounds.
It will be noticed that I have not attempted a full description of leprosy. The symptoms once set forth, I fear certain of my impressionable readers might begin to experience them, just as hypochondriacs, after reading a patent-medicine almanac, appropriate to themselves all the diseases therein described. The doctors have enough to do; far be it from me to add to their troubles a swarm of pseudo-leprosy cases. Besides, such an enumeration could do no good. These things are depressing. Let us forget them, or, at least, the worst of them. p137
CHAPTER VI
THE LONG TRAVERSE
"It will be a long traverse."
"Yes, but what of that? The Snark is equal to it, and so are we."