Leprosy in America

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 11, 1875

Leprosy in America.

We usually think of this loathsome disease as a malady wholly confined to the torrid regions of the East; but it appears from recent developments that the scourge is already at our doors, in fact, has existed in some portions of our country for many years. It is said to be quite common among the Chinese of California, being perpetuated and propagated by the uncleanly and vicious habits of those people. But it is in Carraquette, a small province of New Brunswick, that this most hideous malady appears in its greatest proportions in America. This district is almost solely inhabited by French, the descendants of a colony planted there one hundred or more years ago.

These people are very exclusive in their social habits, and have intermarried to that degree that it is said that there are very few families in the district who can marry without a dispensation or special permit from the church officials, on account of relationship. They subsist largely upon salt fish and herring, and live in dirty hovels, entirely disregarding every sanitary law respecting cleanliness and ventilation. These unfortunate victims of a hopeless disease have an obscure and doubtful tradition that the origin of the plague may be traced to a party of shipwrecked sailors from Marseilles, who were infected with it. It is by many good authorities supposed, however, that it originated in their unwholesome habits of diet, their wretched dwellings, and the long continued disregard of both moral and physical law which they have practiced in close intermarriage.

The disease has become so prevalent that the government has found it necessary to erect a hospital for the especial accommodation of this class of patients; and in this lazaretto may be seen individuals of both sexes and all ages, from infancy to second childhood, exhibiting the disease in all its stages and phases. Although the authorities are very prompt in transferring to this living charnel house every person who exhibits the symptoms of the disease, it is found to be still on the increase, appearing often in children of apparently healthy parents.

The same form of leprosy which is found at Carraquette also prevails very extensively along the coast of Norway, among a class of people of similar habits.

Some maintain that the disease is not contagious, and that it can only be disseminated by hereditary transmission, never being produced de novo. These persons seem to forget, notwithstanding their learning, that all diseases must have arisen spontaneously at first, since the first individual suffering from any given disease could not have received the affection by hereditary transmission from a healthy parent.