The extent of its former ravages is
unknown, but it is estimated that at the present day there are
over 250,000 lepers in India, and the number in China is possibly
beyond computation. According to Morrow, in 1889 in the Sandwich
Islands there were 1100 lepers in the settlement at Molokai.
Berger states that there were 100 cases at Key West; and Blanc
found 40 cases at New Orleans. Cases of leprosy are not
infrequently found among the Chinese on the Pacific coast, and an
occasional case is seen in the large cities of this country. At
the present day in Europe, where leprosy was once so well known,
it is never found except in Norway and the far East.
Possibly few diseases have caused so much misery and suffering as
leprosy. The banishment from all friends and relatives, the
confiscation of property and seclusion from the world, coupled
with poverty and brutality of treatment,--all emphasize its
physical horror a thousandfold. As to the leper himself, no more
graphic description can be given than that printed in The
Ninteenth Century, August, 1884: "But leprosy! Were I to describe
it no one would follow me. More cruel than the clumsy torturing
weapons of old, it distorts, and scars, and hacks, and maims, and
destroys its victim inch by inch, feature by feature, member by
member, joint by joint, sense by sense, leaving him to cumber the
earth and tell the horrid tale of a living death, till there is
nothing left of him.
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