Memoir on leprosy in Syria / by John Wortabet.

  • Wortabet, John, 1827-1908.
Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memoir on leprosy in Syria / by John Wortabet. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    22/28 (page 20)
    of any kind. They were all positive in denying it. One of them expressed himself in this way:— I saw but one leper in my life, and I never came near him.” I know instances of lepers’ wives living with their husbands a number of years, who never gave it to them; and vice versa. I saw a leper Jew in Damascus who lived four years with his first wife. After the disease had fully declared itself, she obtained a divorce and left him. He then took a second wife, whom I saw. She had been living with him about four years also, and was quite free from the disease. And yet, considering the nature and external phenomena of leprosy, and the apparently universal opinion of ancient medical writers, it is somewhat difficult to pronounce positively that it is wholly, and under all circumstances, non-contagious. There is one instance narrated on the authority of Dr. Stangenwald, of Homolulu, physician of the King of the Sandwich Islands, in which the disease was apparently transmitted by inoculation.* 1 Segregation.—There does not appear to be a definite law in Mo- hammedan books of jurisprudence in relation to lepers, though the idea is a prevalent one that it provides for compulsory exclusion when the friends of the patient demand it, but not otherwise. Such cases are never, however, brought before a judge. The usual way is that lepers, after the disease is well declared, are excluded from all near intercourse with their friends, as a precautionary measure against contagion, as well as from a natural feeling of repulsion. When their friends are in good circumstances, and are kind to them, they are generally, if not always, segregated in some separate apartment, and their wants are attended to. In other cir- cumstances they become professional beggars. In Jerusalem they have a separate quarter near the Zion gate. When they become inmates of such leper-houses as those in Damascus, it is altogether a voluntary act on their part, and they are always at liberty to leave when they choose. On the whole, the lot of lepers is a peculiarly hard one, and their sufferings, from this point of view alone, are extremely severe. The provision made for them in leper-houses is altogether inadequate to their condition and wants. contagion. We know many married persons, one of whom is leprous, cohabiting for years without the other becoming affected. At St. George’s Hospital many of the attendants on the inmates have lived there for more than thirty years, and are quite free from any trace of disease.’ . . . ‘ As the result of our observa- tions we have only to deny the contagiousness of leprosy.’ ” (Report on Leprosy by the Royal College of Physicians, p. lxix.) 1 Leprosy seems to abound in the Sandwich Islands, and Dr. Stangenwald was sent on a mission to study the disease in different parts of the world. The instance mentioned above was related by the doctor to a friend of a mine, from whom I heard it. Two boys in India were playing together, one was a native and leprous, the other an English boy; the native plunged a needle in his thigh, and said to the English boy, “ Sec what I have done, can you do like me ?” His high-spirited companion took the same needle and plunged it in his own flesh, and soon after was attacked with leprosy.