SYMPTOMS AND DIAGNOSIS OF LEPROSY

The compilation of notes in this paper is the result of study of the lepers in the Isolation Hospital of San Francisco, of private cases and of observation of patients in the University of California Hospital. The thirteen cases of leprosy in the Isolation Hospital are all chronic, and most of them show evidences of all stages of the disease. Leprosy is a chronic infectious disease that is produced by a semiacid-fast micro-organism which, morphologically, somewhat resembles the tubercle bacillus. After invasion into the human body this bacillus effects changes in it which are of apparent diagnostic significance. Leprosy must be regarded as a systemic disease, and may, at some period of its case history, implicate any or all of the units of the human body. This statement can be verified by a direct or indirect manifestation of the malady. By an indirect manifestation of leprosy we mean that, in