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"And as Jesus came to Jerusalem, He went through Galilee, and entering into a village, behold, ten lepers stood afar off, and cried, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us, and He said to them, Go show yourselves to the priest.
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.
Of course he had not been long there without finding out that the disease of leprosy was terribly common, and that the Government had set apart the island of Molokai as a home for the lepers, in order to prevent the spread of the disease; but the work given him to do lay in other directions, and in spite of the intense pity he felt for these poor outcasts he did not take any part in actual relief.
To remain hidden in shunned districts, among moral and social lepers, would be living death. How else stay in Calcutta and not be recognized? The thought of constant disguise was repugnant. He shrank from the appearance of falsehood. Realizing the urgent necessity of concealment, he must be reserved and silent, having no confidants.
I have read that when Robert Louis Stevenson visited the island of the lepers where Father Damien did his illustrious work he played croquet with the children, using the same mallets that they used; and when it was suggested that he put gloves upon his hands he refused to do so because, he said, "it will remind them the more of the difference between us."
And so, with absent queries, she led him on, till suddenly his words startled her. He had had the fever in a secret colony of thirty lepers on one of the Hawaiian Islands. "But why did you go there?" she demanded. Such royal carelessness of body seemed criminal. "Because I didn't know," he answered. "I never dreamed of lepers.
They realized that not only the lepers and the infirm needed the touch of Christ, but that the power of the Master would bring blessing to the children as well.
There are at this time eight hundred and four persons, lepers, in the settlement, besides about one hundred non-lepers, who prefer to remain there in their ancient homes. Since January, 1865, when the first leper was sent here, one thousand one hundred and eighty have been received, of whom seven hundred and fifty-eight were males and four hundred and twenty-two females.
However, when there was a prosperous, independent African nation, blacks throughout the world would be treated with respect. He noted that Englishmen and Frenchmen were not lynched, but that blacks, in contrast, were treated like lepers.
These last deaths brought the panic to its height; and sailors, officers, cabin-passengers, and emigrants all looked upon each other like lepers. All but the only true leper among us the mariner Jackson, who seemed elated with the thought, that for him already in the deadly clutches of another disease no danger was to be apprehended from a fever which only swept off the comparatively healthy.
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