Abstract
MR. ROBERT BOYLE has travelled round the world no fewer than four times for the purpose of studying sanitary science and preparing the way for the introduction of the ventilating and sanitary appliances he has invented. An interesting account of his fourth journey is given in a little book entitled “A Sanitary Crusade through the East and Australasia,” consisting of a series of papers reprinted from the Building News. In the course of this “crusade” Mr. Boyle visited Burmah, the Malay native states, Sumatra, Siam, Borneo, Java, Australia, New Zealand, Samoa, the Sandwich Islands, and America. Of all the facts noted by him as a sanitarian the most remarkable are those relating to leprosy, a disease which he believes to be spreading to an alarming extent all over the world. He was particularly struck by the gigantic proportions the evil has assumed in Burmab. The steps of the great Shwedagon pagoda at Rangoon, the Mecca of the Indo-Chinese Buddhists he found to be “closely lined from top to bottom with lepers, suffering from that loathsome disease in its worst forms and most advanced stages” A number of the victims examined by Mr. Boyle “presented a most sickening and awful spectacle.” Yet no provision worthy of the name appears to he made for the maintenance or treatment of these poor lepers, who are thus compelled to resort to begging to keep themselves in existence. At Mandalay Mr. Boyle came in contact with horrors of a similar nature. During times of high festival the entrances of the great Arakan pagoda in that city are crowded by hundreds of lepers, so that the visitor has to pick his way carefully among them. In the Sandwich Islands also Mr. Boyle was strongly impressed by the terrible effects of the curse of leprosy, which, he says, has nearly decimated the native population.
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A Sanitarian's Travels. Nature 47, 105–106 (1892). https://doi.org/10.1038/047105a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/047105a0