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The Recrudescence of Leprosy and Its Causation; A Popular Treatise
The Recrudescence of Leprosy and Its Causation A Popular Treatise Author:William Tebb General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1893 Original Publisher: S. Sonnenschein Subjects: Leprosy Vaccination Medical / Infectious Diseases Medical / Immunology Medical / Preventive Medicine Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or mis... more »sing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: So CONFLICTING THEORIES. CHAPTER II. IS LEPROSY CONTAGIOUS? One of the most debatable points in connection with the spread of leprosy is that of contagion, and amongst dermatologists there are rival schools -- con- tagionists and anti-contagionists. In the report of the Committee of the Royal College of Physicians, issued in 1867, thirteen were in favour of contagion, and thirty-four physicians and experts in various parts of the world were convinced that the disease was non- contagious. The chief authorities in Norway, including Boeck and Danielsen, who had forty years experience, were opposed to contagion ; and this is the prevailing view in Norway at the present time. Dr. G. A. Hansen says: -- "If people wash themselves, and take the least care of themselves, when they come in contact with lepers, I do not think there is any danger whatever. It is a remarkable fact that not one of the nurses or servants in our Asylums (Norway) has caught the disease, although they daily wash and dress the patients." In the pursuit of my investigation, I have been confronted on every hand by the most conflicting theories with regard to the causation of leprosy, and particularly with regard to this question of contagion. The contagionists, when pressed, I found invariably included inoculation, and interpreted the word in that COMMUNICABLE ONLY BY INOCULATION. 81 sense. They admitted that the leprous discharge might be touched with impunity, when the integu- .' ...« less