The duty of the government in leprosy care and control / Isadore Dyer.

  • Isadore Dyer
Date:
[1914]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The duty of the government in leprosy care and control / Isadore Dyer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ana and Texas. The sporadic cases in the states in the middle territory show the signals of new areas of infection. Each seaport at present is a ready medium of new cases as quarantine of leprosy is administered, and once admitted the regulations of local and state boards of health are not adequate in provisions or enforcement to check the ingress by a proper notifica- tion to federal officials charged with the quarantine enforcement. Those of us who have been persistently militant in the demand for national control of leprosy are repeatedly subjected to the charge of hysteria in our ideas of the dangers of leprosy. Such attacks are engaged in by men to whom leprosy is an exotic disease, rarely observed and to whom no economic, sociologic or domestic phase can appeal. The disrup- tion of a family through the occurrence of leprosy in its bread-winner; the horror of public condemnation of the unfortunate attacked by the disease; the notice of fresh outbreak in the same family, all are forceful arguments to one who knows the habits of the disease and the possibilities of the outcome. While leprosy is slowly contagious and probably mildly contagious, its usual horrors argue the danger of neglect. With prob- ably 500 known cases to-day, how many will there be in ten years, if there is no control? PREVIOUS ATTEMPTS AT NATIONAL LEGISLATION AND ACTION FOR LEPROSY CONTROL In 1900, a bill for a national leper law was intro- duced at the Fifty-Sixth Congress by Mr. Raynor of Maryland. Its provisions generally contemplated a response to the Berlin Lepra Conference. A commis- sioner on leprosy was projected, to cooperate with state boards of health. A reservation in Yellowstone Park or other suitable place was suggested, with an appropriation of $50,000 for the erection of suitable buildings. The bill carried provisions for the appre- hension, observation and control of the individual leper, in and out of the national asylum, which should be open to all lepers in the United States. Provision for regulation of entrance or transportation of lepers from foreign countries, territories, etc., was also made. It was intended that the asylum should be in charge of the United States Public Health Service. This bill died in committee.
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