f the old world.

It is now found in Norway and to a less extent in Sweden, in Bulgaria,
Greece, Russia, Austro-Hungary and Italy, with much reduced percentage in
middle Europe; it is the rarest of diseases in England where once it
existed. In India, Java, and China, in Egypt, Algiers, and Southern
Africa, in Australia and in both North and South America, including
particularly Central America, Cuba, and the Antilles, it exists to a less
extent. It has been recognized in the United States chiefly in New
Orleans, San Francisco, (predominantly among the Chinese population of
that city). The disease has steadily decreased among the latter colonists
in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa. Isolated cases have been recognized in
almost every state, and leprous cases are presented at the public
charities of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, etc. The estimated number of
lepers a few years ago in the United States varied between two hundred and
five hundred. It is represented as diminishing in frequency in the
Hawaiian Islands, Porto Rico and the Philippines. In the Hawaiian Islands
it spread rapidly after 1860, and strenuous attempts have been made to
stamp it out by segregating all lepers on the island of Molokai. There
were 1,152 lepers in that settlement in 1894. In British India, according
to the leprosy commission, there were 100,000 lepers in 1900.

Cause.--The bacillus, discovered by Hansen, of Bergen, in 1874, is
universally recognized as the cause of leprosy. It has many points of
resemblance to the tubercle bacillus. These bacilli have been found in the
dwellings and clothing of lepers as well as in the dust of apartments
occupied by the victims.

[238 MOTHERS' REMEDIES]

The usual vehicle by which the disease is transmitted is the secretions of
a leprous patient containing bacilli or spores. The question of
inheritance of leprosy is regarded now as standing in the same position as
that relating to the inheritance of tuberculosis; no foetus, no new-born
living child, has been known to exhibit the symptoms of either disease.
Several cases have been cited where infants but a few weeks old exhibited
symptoms of leprosy. It affects men more than women. Infection is more
common after the second decade, though children are occasionally among its
victims. When it occurs in countries where it had not previously existed,
its appearance is invariably due to the infection of sound individuals by
lepers first exhibiting symptoms where