“I saw a leper,” writes Mr. Bailey,[3] “in a shop, sitting in the midst of his goods. He sells betel nut, tobacco, oil, cakes, etc. He has a leprous brother living with him, also a brother not leprous, and a niece who already shows signs of the disease. We asked the healthy brother if he were not afraid to live in the house, and he said that if it were not God’s will he could not take the disease.” So far as science has yet ascertained, three causes may be specified: (1) Insanitary conditions of life generally, as predisposing to it. (2) Heredity, to some extent. (3) Contagion resulting from lengthened residence in close company with leprous and insanitary surroundings. It is not yet determined to what extent these causes respectively operate. It is the business of the Leprosy Commissioners, sent out at the expense of the National Leprosy Fund, of which the Prince of Wales is the President, to try and ascertain more on these points, by the careful and exhaustive inquiries they have been pursuing; and their report is now awaited. In India there are medical men who have studied this disease for many years, for there are hundreds of thousands of lepers scattered over India. Dr. Munro, an acknowledged authority, and a man of deep research, says: “Summing up, therefore, leprosy is not always, but only very rarely, transmitted from generation to generation, has never been proved to be transmitted without contact, is not constantly transmitted even when both parents are diseased, seldom affects more than one child in a family, and those only successively, independently of age, sometimes the youngest first, after contact, and goes back from child to parent when in contact. From all I have learned of the disease, I can find no proof of even the hereditary predisposition allowed to exist by Virchow, but feel much inclined to believe with Landré, that contagion is the only cause of its propagation.” On the contrary, another expert, Dr. MacLaren, who has been in charge of a leper asylum at Dehra for many years, and has very carefully studied the question, has come to the conclusion, after an exhaustive inquiry into the antecedents of all the inmates of his asylum, that 36·4 per cent. of the cases were distinctly traceable to heredity. A curious light has been thrown on these mutually contradictory conclusions, by the contrast in the experience of two different homes for lepers shown in the following quotation from Mr. Bailey’s book. At Tarn Táran there is a large Government Institution, supported by the different municipalities that send lepers to it. Here no restriction is placed on marriage, and there is no attempt at the separation of the sexes, consequently many children are born in the asylum. The missionary of the Church Missionary Society stationed there says:—