Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 2.djvu/266

EURASIAN feature akin to the biological phenomenon known as atavism, but of perhaps doubtful analogy, for the possibility of a fresh infection or inoculation has always to be borne in mind. There are numerous instances of such hereditary transmission among the patients, both Native and Eurasian, in the Leper Hospital. The spread of the disease by contagion is slow, the most intimate contact even, such as that between parent and child, often failing to effect Inoculation. Still there is much evidence in support of Its being inoculable by cohabitation, prolonged contact, wearing the same clothing, sharing the dwelling, using the same cooking and eating utensils, and even by arm-to-arm vaccination. Influenced by a belief in the last mentioned cause, vaccination was formerly regarded with much suspicion and dislike by Eurasians In Madras. But their apprehensions on this score have abated since animal vaccine was substituted for the humanised material. It has also for long been a popular belief among the same class that the suckling of their infants by infected Native wet-nurses is a common source of the disease. Attempts to reproduce leprosy from supposed pure cultures of the leprosy bacillus have Invariably failed, and this strengthens the belief that the disease would die out if sufferers from the tubercular or mixed forms were segregated, and intermarriage with members of known leprous families interdicted. Experience shows that, where such marriages are freely entered into, a notable prevalence of the disease results, as at Pondicherry for example, where the so-called Creole population is said to contain a large proportion of lepers from this cause."

Writing concerning the prevalence of insanity in different classes, the Census Commissioner, 1891, states