Leprosy: patients in hospital in Kuala Lumpur, before and after treatment. Photograph album by Ernest Travers, 192- (?).

[between 1920 and 1929?]

1 photograph album (19 leaves, 36 photographs) : photoprints ; mounts 33 x 23 cm

Tai Foong Chee treatment of leprosy Lettering on fol. 1r continues: "Photographs of nine lepers taken before and after a years treatment by what is known as the Tai Foong Chee method. Four photographs are shewn of groups of lepers who have been under this treatment and who now have no visible sign of leprosy. The Tai Foong Chee treatment consists of [...]" Most photographs have captions below, some printed, others manuscript

Dr Ernest Travers (1865-1934), the State Surgeon of Selangor (1891-1897), was one of the pioneers in the treatment of leprosy in the Straits Settlements of Malaya in the 1920s. Travers "oversaw Setapak, the old asylum in Kuala Lumpur, and pioneered a more humanitarian and enlightened approach to segregation in the 1920s. In his attempt to reform living conditions, he outlined the idea of Sungei Buloh as a small self-contained town which would be a "haven of refuge" (A. Joshua-Raghavar, Leprosy in Malaysia: past, present and future, Sungei Buluh, Selangor, West Malaysia: A. Joshua-Raghavar, 1983, p. 56). This plan was actualised by Dr Gordon Ryrie. Many people in Malaysia would like to see the settlement preserved as a memorial to the past experiences of people who lived and worked and suffered there, but already some of the settlement has been demolished for a very modern hospital. My impression of the place, from photographs and from visiting was that, in spite of the horrors of World War II and the rigours and deprivations of segregation, it was a happy place, which as you can imagine cannot be said of many old leprosy sites. We have photographs of Sungei Buloh on our website: http://www.leprosyhistory.org/english/gallery/gallerylepmal.htm" (email from Jo Robertson, Oxford University ILA Global Project on the History of Leprosy Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, 2010)

Wellcome Collection 730486i