The leper brass band wailed, and two
singing societies wailed, and lastly a quintet of excellent voices
wailed.
So much for a lie that should never have been printed. The
wailing was the serenade which the glee clubs always give Mr.
McVeigh when he returns from a trip to Honolulu.
Leprosy is not so contagious as is imagined. I went for a week's
visit to the Settlement, and I took my wife along - all of which
would not have happened had we had any apprehension of contracting
the disease. Nor did we wear long, gauntleted gloves and keep apart
from the lepers. On the contrary, we mingled freely with them, and
before we left, knew scores of them by sight and name. The
precautions of simple cleanliness seem to be all that is necessary.
On returning to their own houses, after having been among and
handling lepers, the non-lepers, such as the physicians and the
superintendent, merely wash their faces and hands with mildly
antiseptic soap and change their coats.
That a leper is unclean, however, should be insisted upon; and the
segregation of lepers, from what little is known of the disease,
should be rigidly maintained. On the other hand, the awful horror
with which the leper has been regarded in the past, and the
frightful treatment he has received, have been unnecessary and
cruel. In order to dispel some of the popular misapprehensions of
leprosy, I want to tell something of the relations between the
lepers and non-lepers as I observed them at Molokai.
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