p. 92 | LEPROSY IN LAOS, SIAM by E. B. M'Gilvary

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 12, 1892

LEPROSY IN LAOS, SIAM.

By E. B. M'Gilvary

BY THE REV. E. B. M'GILVARY.

[Missionary of the Presbyterian Board.]

ONE of the most constant drains upon one's pity here is the omnipresent leper. Go where you will about the city, you will be almost sure to see one or more of these miserable unfortunates making his rounds begging. There is practically no quarantine put on the disease, except in the matter of permanent dwelling. Here and there villages are set apart for their use, and all lepers are presumably required to live in these villages. But there is absolute freedom of egress. In fact, it is necessary that they should be allowed to go where they will in search of food and clothing so long as the authorities make no provision for them. In front of my house, less than a stone's throw from the bank, there is a small island, and, except at highest water, some three or four boats full of lepers are always to be seen. They come up from the leper village some distance below, Chieng-Mai, and make this island the basis of their begging operations. Those who have no boats come afoot.

It would be hard to say how many are in and about the city every day, but many times I have seen as many as seventy collected outside the gate of some missionary's house, waiting for some charity. Those that thus come are in all stages of the disease—the little nursling, sometimes as healthy looking as any babe can be, sometimes already showing signs of blood taint; little boys and girls, some with very attractive faces, some already loathsome in deformity; young men and maidens, and the aged, some without eyes, ears, nose, fingers, or toes, just a mass of living putrefaction. They come just as long as they can move their suffering bodies. And nobody here thinks of fearing them. So utterly foolhardy are the natives in their contact with these lepers that many sound persons go to live in the leper villages, in constant touch with the diseased, merely to enjoy the immunities from government impress that are accorded to the inhabitants of these villages.

When there is such gross carelessness, it is unnecessary to say that there is no attempt made to lessen the dangers of contamination. The barefooted leper with festering feet walks across the bridge, and his track is followed by thousands of other barefooted passengers. He takes his change in his mutilated hands and buys food; the money finds its way into everybody's house—the coppers of the realm are leprous coppers. There are hundreds of ways in which the contagion is spread, and the disease attacks new families every year, and the authorities do nothing. It would cost them too much money to seclude, and feed, and clothe the hundreds of victims, and the common people have to bear the burden of supporting by alms a pitifully large and pitifully suffering class, who give nothing but disease in return.—The Independent.