Who Hide Disease: Good Results from New Treatment From Our Own Correspondent.
Hangchow, Oct. 13.
We are building a new hospital for the leper women and we want help to lay the bricks in prayer as well as mortar. We hope with the new treatment this new building will sce many poor lepers not only relieved but cured—made well in body and soul.
Leprosy is a very old disease, as old as the hills, and was prevalent in Great Britain till the Mth century when segregation measures were enforced and the lepers had to iver a special garb, walk in the middle of the road, and point out with a stick to anything they wished to buy, very effective methods indeed against a disease like leprosy where prolonged. Close contact through living in the same house for example, is generally necessary to allow of the infection being conveyed to the healthy. The present little town of Liberton south of Edinburghswas once called Leper town. The lepers here are chiefly poor and when the disease is far advanced take to begging and during the "pilgrim season" make as much as keeps them the rest of the year. We have a proverb here which says: "after three years begging the beggar would not accept the office of a mandarin." When Dr. Hansen, a Norwegian, discovered the leper bacillus the infectiousness of the disease was established and segregation measures were emphasized as the only known means of controlling and stamping out the disease.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.