[Infectious diseases 241]

Treatment.—­The main treatment is the isolation and segregation of all lepers from contact with the well; wholesome laws are enforced in some countries where leprosy prevails, and provision is made not only for the isolation and segregation, but also for their care.  On account of its relative variety America has not yet awakened and legislation only forbids the entry of infected persons.  At Molokai, in the Hawaiian Islands, provision is made for the care of lepers.  Many of the public hospitals for the care of the sick poor refuse to receive lepers.  The child of a leprous woman should be removed from the mother after birth and not nursed by another woman.  No medicines are known to have any curative effect.  An immediate change of residence and climate should be made if the patient happens to live in a district where the disease prevails.  A highly nutritious diet should be taken.

The outlook.—­The future is in general dark for the leper.  It is often of a malignant character, and a fatal result is the rule.  A change of climate and conditions may help.  Scandinavian lepers who have removed to the United States have been greatly benefited by the change, but there is no known cure.  The isolation should be as effective as that for tuberculosis.  It is not contagious but infectious.

Hydrophobia.—­Rabies and hydrophobia are two different terms, meaning the same disease, the former meaning to rage or become mad.  This term applies more especially to the disease as it exists in the maniacal form in the lower animals, while hydrophobia comes from the Greek, meaning “dread of water.”  As we occasionally find this dread of water only in the human subject, the term is properly used in such a case.  The lower animals frequently attempt to drink water even though the act brings on a spasmodic contraction of the swallowing (deglutitory) muscles.  Hydrophobia is an acute infectious disease communicated to man by the bite of an animal suffering from rabies.  It is due to a definite specific virus which is transmitted through the saliva by the bite of a rabid animal.  Its natural habitat (location) is the nervous system, and it does not retain its virulence when introduced into any other system of organs.  It is essentially a nervous disease and transmitted by the saliva of rabid animals.  When inoculated into a wound this virus must come in contact with a broken nerve trunk in order to survive and reproduce itself.  If by accident it attacks the end of the broken nerve trunk, it slowly and gradually extends to the higher nerve centers and eventually produces the disease.

[242 Mothers’ remedies]