Lepers : thirty-six years' work among them being the history of the Mission to Lepers in India and the East, 1874-1910 / by John Jackson ; with a short introduction by the Dowager Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava.

  • Jackson, John, 1853-1917
Date:
1910
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Lepers : thirty-six years' work among them being the history of the Mission to Lepers in India and the East, 1874-1910 / by John Jackson ; with a short introduction by the Dowager Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    supposed, to save her children she begged her husband to bury her alive. At length he yielded to her persistent request, and, together with his son, dug the grave. In the presence of four neighbours the poor victim to a barbarous belief was thus sacrificed. The facts in this case were substantially proved in the course of a magisterial investigation. And this last, be it remembered, is a modern instance and occurred in a district under direct British rule. After this it need scarcely be added that in days when suttee and infanticide had but recently been suppressed, the many thousands of homeless and outcast lepers were found under conditions of poverty and misery that made their existence literally a living death. As this volume is mainly the record of a Society whose beneficent work, though begun in India, was later to extend to countries farther east, it should be noted that the vast multitude of lepers in China, Japan, and other parts of the distant Orient were, and are, in no better case than their fellow-sufferers in India. Naturally our knowledge of the number of lepers in China is even less complete than in the case of India. But of the existence of a vast host of them in that great Empire there is no doubt. Dr. P. B. Cousland, of the English Presbyterian Mission, Swatow, says on this point:— “ It [leprosy] is most common on the south and south-east coasts of China, and diminishes in frequency as you proceed north- wards, until, in the extreme north, it is only met with among emigrants from the south. “ In the region of which Swatow is the treaty port, leprosy is extremely common. Travelling in the country you meet lepers everywhere, and in all stages of the disease, from the earliest manifestation to the most loathsome and disfigured state. “ Supposing we estimate that in the last thirty years we have seen one out of every five lepers in this region, this would bring the total number of lepers, in a tract of country with a population rather less than that of Scotland, to about 25,cxx), and this number, in my opinion, is probably under the mark.”
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