LEPROSY IN RUSSIA

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 7, 1892

LEPROSY IN RUSSIA.

Miss Marsden, who has recently been traveling in Siberia with some official assistance, to investigate the extent of leprosy in Siberian Russia, makes a report of which the following is the substance: Leprosy exists as a disease in a district extending over several thousand versts. No provision whatever is made for the care of the sufferers. As soon as the disease declares itself, the victim is driven into the forests, and never allowed to come again into contact with his fellow-creatures. A number of wretched huts have been half built, half excavated from the ground, and in these shelters the lepers must live without any clothing except a few miserable old sheepskins, all through the rigors of a Siberian winter, and the tropical heat of the summer. These huts are always in the most distant parts of the forests, and are hundreds of versts apart. The main food of the lepers is the bark of trees, and small quantities of rotten fish which their relatives from time to time deposit for them at a short distance from the huts. Many were blind, and some insane. Some of them have lived in this state for twenty years. It is Miss Marsden's intention to return to Yakutsk, and to establish a leprosy colony at Valuisk, on the river Velui. On her return to Moscow her report excited so much interest that a Russian princess, in one of the convents there, with five Russian Red Cross Sisters, volunteered to serve in the leprosy-stricken district.—British Medical Journal.