This malady, then, can hardly be contagious, since in one family husband or wife may be attacked, while the other goes unscathed. There is now at Tracadie a man, François Robichaud by name, who has had three wives; the two first perished of leprosy, the third is now under treatment at the lazaretto—the husband in the meanwhile enjoying perfect health. In one family two or more children are lepers, while the others are untainted. One servant-woman resided for eight years in the hospital, ate and drank with the patients, yet has never shown any symptoms of the disease. The laundress of the institution lives under its roof, and has done so for two years; she is a widow, her husband having died of the scourge, she being his sole nurse during his illness. She is in perfect health. It has also happened more than once that persons suspected of leprosy, and placed in the hospital, after remaining there several years and developing no further symptoms, are discharged as “whole.”
All the patients now in the hospital agree that the disease is communicated by touch, and each has his own theory as to where he was exposed to it—either by sleeping with some one who had it, or by eating and drinking with such.
I am strongly persuaded that this disease, whatever may be its origin, is greatly aggravated by the kind of life led by the natives of Tracadie, who are all fishermen or sailors. Their food is fish, generally herring, and their only vegetables turnips and potatoes. Such is their extreme poverty that there are not ten families in Tracadie who ever touch bread.
Let us follow Governor Gordon into the lazaretto.
“At the time of my visit,” he says, “there were twenty-three patients, thirteen men and ten women. They were all French and all Catholics, belonging to the lower class. They were of all ages, and had reached various stages of the disease. One old man, whose features were distorted out of all semblance to humanity, and who had apparently entered his second childhood, could hardly be sufficiently aroused from his apathy to receive the benediction of the bishop, before whom all the others sank on their knees.
“There were also young people who, to a casual observer, seemed vigorous and in health; while, saddest of all sights was that of the young children condemned to spend their lives in this terrible place. Above all was I touched by the sight of three small boys from eleven to fifteen years of age. To an inexperienced observer they had much the look of other children of their own age and class. Their eyes were bright and intelligent, but the fatal symptoms that had sufficed to separate them from home and kindred were written on their persons, and they were immured for life in the lazaretto.
“The greatest sympathy must naturally be felt for these younger victims when one thinks of the possible length of years that stretches before them, hopeless and cheerless; to grow to manhood with the capacities, passions, and desires of manhood, and condemned to live from youth to middle age, from middle age to decrepitude possibly, with no other society than that of their companions in misery. Utterly without occupations, amusements, or interests, shut off from all outside resources, their only excitement is found in the arrival of a new disease-stricken patient, their only occupation that of watching their companions dying before their eyes by inches!
“But few of the patients could read, and those who could were without books. There was evident need of some organization that might furnish the patients with employment. Both mind and body required occupation. Under these circumstances I was by no means surprised to learn that in the last stages of the disease the mind was generally much weakened.
“The suffering of the majority of the patients was by no means severe, and I was informed that one of the characteristic features of the malady was profound insensibility to pain. One individual was pointed out to me, who by mistake had laid his arm and open hand on a red-hot stove, and who knew nothing of it until the odor of burning flesh aroused his attention.”
After Governor Gordon’s visit the condition of the lepers was much improved. The sisters taught the young to read and employed them in making shoes and other articles.