1444 THE HONGKONG GOVERNMENT GAZETTE, 2ND SEPTEMBER, 1899.
GOVERNMENT NOTIFICATION.--No. 489.
The following Circular Despatch is published.
By Command,
Colonial Secretary's Office, Hongkong, 2nd September, 1899.
J. H. STEWART LOCKHART, Colonial Secretary,
CIRCULAR.
SIR,
DOWNING STREET,
21st June, 1899.
It will doubtless be within your recollection that towards the close of 1897 a representative Con- ference assembled at Berlin to discuss the question of the origin and spread of leprosy, and the means by which the disease might best be averted or arrested.
1
2. The conclusions of the Conference have been published in two volumes, which have already been communicated officially to several Colonies. These conclusions will be found stated in an English translation on pages 191 and 192 of Volume II. of the Report; and a copy of this extract is enclosed for your information.*
3. As my predecessors in this Office had always been guided on a subject of this kind by the advice of the Royal College of Physicians, I caused a letter to be written to the Council of that body asking that the College would be so good as to take into consideration the conclusions of the Berlin Conference, and to inform me how far their previous views as to the character of leprosy had been modified by further investigation and by the proceedings of the Conference at Berlin.
4. The College of Physicians referred this question to a special Committee which has now sub- mitted the Report of which a copy is enclosed† : from it you will see that they have very considerably modified their previous opinion as to the extent to which leprosy can be communicated by contagion,
5. In these circumstances, it becomes necessary for me to review the instructions and suggestions which my predecessors have addressed to Colonial Governments upon this question.
6. In a Circular despatch of the 29th of April, 1867, the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos called the attention of Colonial Governments to the fact that the Royal College of Physicians considered that leprosy was not contagious, and requested each Government to take steps for the abrogation of any law or practice which existed for the compulsory seclusion of lepers.
7. Lord Kimberley's Circular despatch of the 16th of September, 1871, was directed towards removing fear of transmission of leprosy by vaccination.
8. In a later despatch of the 4th of September, 1873, Lord Kimberley, dealing at some length with the whole subject of leprosy, clearly indicated that no sufficient evidence had up to that time been produced in support of the belief which prevailed in many Colonies that leprosy was contagious.
9. In 1875 the possibility that leprosy was sometimes contagious was strongly pressed upon Lord Carnarvon by the Governor of British Guiana, and the subject was once more referred to the Royal College of Physicians, with the result that they adhered to the opinion which they had pre- viously expressed that leprosy was not contagious.
10. The subject was again brought before the College in 1887, when they still maintained the view that there was no ground for the opinion that leprosy was in such a degree contagious as to justify compulsory segregation of those affected by the disease, although they did guardedly admit that in a low degree and under exceptional circumstances the disease might be considered to be contagious.
11. This view it should be added was confirmed by the special Commission which was sent out to India to investigate the nature and causes of leprosy in 1890-1891, a copy of whose Report accom- panied Lord Ripon's Circular despatch of the 14th August, 1893: the members of the Commission reporting to the effect that "though in a scientific classification of diseases leprosy must be regarded as contagious and also inoculable, yet the extent to which it is propagated by these means is exceedingly small" so as not to justify compulsory segregation.
12. By the opinions of the Royal College of Physicians, supported as far as could be gathered by the best medical experience, successive Secretaries of State have hitherto been guided in respect to proposals for the segregation of lepers in the various Colonies not possessing responsible Government, and laws or regulations tending to compulsory isolation have almost invariably been forbidden or discouraged in these Colonies, although in the case of certain self-governing Colonies, legislation for the compulsory segregation of lepers has received Her Majesty's assent.
* Enclosure No. 1.
+ Enclosure No. 2.
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