Leprosy in India : a report / by T.R. Lewis and D.D. Cunningham.
- Timothy Richards Lewis
- Date:
- 1877
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Leprosy in India : a report / by T.R. Lewis and D.D. Cunningham. 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.
72/88 page 58
![Of the 52 lepers married, 18 had leprous wives or lius- „ ^ X ■ A ■ .r. ^. bands, but as 17 of these mar- No facts ascertained m the his- . , ^^^'^^ uxai tory of the lepers favouring a belief riages wcrc Contracted bctwecn SseasV°*^^'°''' ^'^ °' lepers in the Asylum, there re- mains only 1 case in which the possibility of contagion is to be considered, and certainly this isolated instance cannot be regarded as affording any trust- worthy evidence, as in an endemic area the possibility of the occasional occurrence of marriages between predisposed parties must always exist. The history of the Asylum furnishes no other evidence in favour of contagion ; there is no to^^oTifeTsyw'''^ evidence of attendants or others employed about the institution or of those in any way connected with it having suffered from the discharge of their duties in any way.* 8.—The evidence which the histories of the inmates afford on the influence of heredity. We next come to the question of heredity of the disease. The inmates of this Asylum belonging to more or less localised hill communities offer greater facilities for the elucidation of this subject than the inmates of similar asylums in the plains, seeing that the former have usually more definite information than the latter concerning their present and ancestral relatives. On this account, therefore, the information which we have obtained from these people regarding the influence of heredity in the propagation of leprosy may, we think, be considered as of more than ordi- nary trustworthiness. * Among the cases reported to the College of Physicians in support of the conta- gious nature of the disease, there is one quoted on the authority of a Native Sub- Assistant Surgeon, in which it is stated that two men, who acted as durwans, t. e., gate-keepers, at the Almora Asylum, were attacked by leprosy whilst so employed. [ Re- port on Leprosy by the Royal CoUege of Physicians; London, 1867—page 141.] On referring to the Superintendent of the Institutiou, the Rev. Mr. Budden, for information on the point, we have been informed that the Sub-Assistant Surgeon in question knew nothing about the Asylum; aud the statement, writes Mr. Budden, has no foundation whatever. Nothing of the kind reported bos ever occurred in the Asylum since I took charge of it in 1851.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22287619_0074.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
