Dr. Goodhue put an immediate and complete stop to the ravage,
and in four weeks those two men will be as well and able-bodied as
they ever were in their lives.
The only difference between them and
you or me is that the disease is lying dormant in their bodies and
may at any future time commit another ravage.
Leprosy is as old as history. References to it are found in the
earliest written records. And yet to-day practically nothing more
is known about it than was known then. This much was known then,
namely, that it was contagious and that those afflicted by it should
be segregated. The difference between then and now is that to-day
the leper is more rigidly segregated and more humanely treated. But
leprosy itself still remains the same awful and profound mystery. A
reading of the reports of the physicians and specialists of all
countries reveals the baffling nature of the disease. These leprosy
specialists are unanimous on no one phase of the disease. They do
not know. In the past they rashly and dogmatically generalized.
They generalize no longer. The one possible generalization that can
be drawn from all the investigation that has been made is that
leprosy is FEEBLY CONTAGIOUS. But in what manner it is feebly
contagious is not known. They have isolated the bacillus of
leprosy. They can determine by bacteriological examination whether
or not a person is a leper; but they are as far away as ever from
knowing how that bacillus finds its entrance into the body of a non-
leper. They do not know the length of time of incubation. They
have tried to inoculate all sorts of animals with leprosy, and have
failed.
They are baffled in the discovery of a serum wherewith to fight the
disease. And in all their work, as yet, they have found no clue, no
cure. Sometimes there have been blazes of hope, theories of
causation and much heralded cures, but every time the darkness of
failure quenched the flame. A doctor insists that the cause of
leprosy is a long-continued fish diet, and he proves his theory
voluminously till a physician from the highlands of India demands
why the natives of that district should therefore be afflicted by
leprosy when they have never eaten fish, nor all the generations of
their fathers before them. A man treats a leper with a certain kind
of oil or drug, announces a cure, and five, ten, or forty years
afterwards the disease breaks out again. It is this trick of
leprosy lying dormant in the body for indeterminate periods that is
responsible for many alleged cures. But this much is certain: AS
YET THERE HAS BEEN NO AUTHENTIC CASE OF A CURE.
Leprosy is FEEBLY CONTAGIOUS, but how is it contagious? An Austrian
physician has inoculated himself and his assistants with leprosy and
failed to catch it. But this is not conclusive, for there is the
famous case of the Hawaiian murderer who had his sentence of death
commuted to life imprisonment on his agreeing to be inoculated with
the bacillus leprae. Some time after inoculation, leprosy made its
appearance, and the man died a leper on Molokai. Nor was this
conclusive, for it was discovered that at the time he was inoculated
several members of his family were already suffering from the
disease on Molokai. He may have contracted the disease from them,
and it may have been well along in its mysterious period of
incubation at the time he was officially inoculated. Then there is
the case of that hero of the Church, Father Damien, who went to
Molokai a clean man and died a leper. There have been many theories
as to how he contracted leprosy, but nobody knows. He never knew
himself. But every chance that he ran has certainly been run by a
woman at present living in the Settlement; who has lived there many
years; who has had five leper husbands, and had children by them;
and who is to-day, as she always has been, free of the disease.
As yet no light has been shed upon the mystery of leprosy. When
more is learned about the disease, a cure for it may be expected.
Once an efficacious serum is discovered, and leprosy, because it is
so feebly contagious, will pass away swiftly from the earth. The
battle waged with it will be short and sharp. In the meantime, how
to discover that serum, or some other unguessed weapon? In the
present it is a serious matter. It is estimated that there are half
a million lepers, not segregated, in India alone. Carnegie
libraries, Rockefeller universities, and many similar benefactions
are all very well; but one cannot help thinking how far a few
thousands of dollars would go, say in the leper Settlement of
Molokai. The residents there are accidents of fate, scapegoats to
some mysterious natural law of which man knows nothing, isolated for
the welfare of their fellows who else might catch the dread disease,
even as they have caught it, nobody knows how. Not for their sakes
merely, but for the sake of future generations, a few thousands of
dollars would go far in a legitimate and scientific search after a
cure for leprosy, for a serum, or for some undreamed discovery that
will enable the medical world to exterminate the bacillus leprae.
There's the place for your money, you philanthropists.
CHAPTER VIII - THE HOUSE OF THE SUN
There are hosts of people who journey like restless spirits round
and about this earth in search of seascapes and landscapes and the
wonders and beauties of nature. They overrun Europe in armies; they
can be met in droves and herds in Florida and the West Indies, at
the Pyramids, and on the slopes and summits of the Canadian and
American Rockies; but in the House of the Sun they are as rare as
live and wriggling dinosaurs.
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