An important official statement on the subject of leprosy and
its treatment was made at a recent meeting of the Metropolitan Asylums Board. The Greenwich Borough Council, it appears, have made leprosy a notifiable disease and asked the managers to express their willingness, with the consent of the Local Government Board, to provide hospital accommodation for the treatment of cases. In reply the General Purposes Committee recommend the Board to inform the Greenwich Borough Council that they are "not prepared to endorse the view that special hospital accommodation is necessary for cases of leprosy, either in the interests of the public health or of the lepers themselves." This view is borne out by the Board's medical officer and the experience of the Local Government Board. There is only one recorded instance of a previously healthy person developing the disease in these islands. Leprosy, he admits, is contagious, but in a low degree, and prolonged and intimate contact are necessary to permit of the spread of infection. As against the occasional deaths from leprosy which occur in the ranks of those who tend lepers must be set the very much larger number which escape. " One sisterhood has had charge of a leper colony for fifty years, during which time no sister has contracted the disease." Hence the official conclusion that lepers who can be maintai*ed in their own homes with proper sanitary precau- tions may safely be left there, and that those living in unhygienic conditions can be treated in the London hospitals and infirmaries without any risk to the other inmates.
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