You will, perhaps, ask how the disease is contracted.  I doubt if any one knows definitely.  But from all I heard, I judge that there must be some degree of predisposition toward it in the person to be contaminated.  I believe I have Dr. Trousseau’s leave to say that the contact of a wounded or abraded surface with the matter of a leprous sore will convey the disease; this is, of course, inoculation; and he seemed to think no other method of contamination probable.  I was careful to provide myself with a pair of gloves when I visited the settlement, to protect myself in case I should be invited to shake hands; but I noticed that the doctor fearlessly shook hands with some of the worst cases, even where the fingers were suppurating and wrapped in rags.

There are several women on the Islands, confirmed lepers, whose husbands are at home and sound; one, notably, where the husband is a white man.  On the other hand, a woman was pointed out to me who had had three husbands, each of whom in a short time after marrying her became a leper.  There are children lepers, whose parents are not lepers; and there are parents lepers, whose children are at home and healthy.

There are three white men on the island, lepers, two of them in a very bad state.  So far as I could learn the particulars of their previous history, they had lived flagitiously loose lives; such as must have corrupted their blood long before they became lepers.  In some other cases of native lepers I came upon similar histories; and while I do not believe that every case, or indeed perhaps a majority of cases, involves such a previous career of vice, I should say that this is certainly a strongly predisposing cause.

As to the danger of infection to a foreign visitor, there is absolutely none, unless he should undertake to live in native fashion among the natives, smoking out of their pipes, sleeping under their tapas, and eating their food with them; and even in such an extreme case his risk would be very slight now, so thoroughly has the disease been “stamped out” by the energetic action of Mr. Hall, the Minister of the Interior, Mr. Samuel G. Wilder, the head of the Board of Health, and Dr. Trousseau, its physician.  In short, there is no more risk of a white resident or traveler catching leprosy in the Hawaiian Islands than in the city or State of New York.

[Illustration:  NATIVE PIPE.  NECKLACE OF HUMAN HAIR.]

I have heard one reason given why this disease has been more frequent in the last ten years.  Ten or twelve years ago the Islands were visited by smallpox.  This disease made terrible ravages, and the Government at once ordered the people to be vaccinated.  There seems to be no doubt that the vaccine matter used was often taken from persons not previously in sound health; this was perhaps unavoidable; but intelligent men, long resident in the Islands, believe that vaccination thus performed with impure matter had a bad effect upon the people, leaving traces of a resulting corruption of their blood.