Note 144 — XV.

In the Leper village near Canton, which is under the superintendence of a Chinese physician, there are about 100 lepers of both sexes, each of whom receives about 20 cash (not quite one penny) daily for his support. The superintendents stated to Dr. Hobson, who repeatedly visited the village, as the result of their many years' experience and observations, that leprosy is not in every case transmitted from parents to children; that several wives of leprous persons have no trace whatever of the disease, but that these women in all probability belong to those of the third and fourth generation, who wholly escape. The Chinese overseers and attendants, however, can have had as little opportunity for remarking upon the breaking out of leprosy among the children of those whose parents were entirely exempt from it as they had of informing themselves with accuracy as to the various forms and rapid diffusion of the disease in the case of the one, or its mild type and gradual disappearance in the other. Perspiration or suppuration in the diseased parts are never remarked in these patients.