Added to all this there is a peculiarly penetrating odour common to lepers, whether they be Europeans or natives of India, constantly emanating from their bodies, which makes contact, or even close conversation, with those afflicted, most objectionable. During my medical experience of over 25 years, I have had, of course, to deal with all sorts of ailments; but the odour evolved from the leper’s body is one so peculiar and “sickening” that I fail to find words to exactly describe it. The effects of a visit to a leper asylum, or to a single individual leper with whom I have had to remain in conversation, produces a sensation quite dissimilar to that resulting from personal contact with any other disease. A peculiar sensation is produced in the mouth, and an irresistible feeling that one has inhaled some disgusting and noxious material, which clings to the tongue, the lining membrane of the mouth and fauces. This feeling lasts for sometimes fifteen minutes after my visit has ended, and is not entirely removed until I have overcome it by smoking a pipe or cigar. This result is (it certainly is not fancy) one that should be strongly impressed on the general public, and be accepted as a powerful argument in favour of secluding all lepers from contact, either directly or indirectly, with any body or thing that is likely to prove a means of communicability. It may not be out of place here to mention that since 1875 I have given the most careful attention to the treatment of leprosy, tried most conscientiously all the various drugs that have been from time to time recommended, and used unsparingly and for prolonged periods all outward applications that have been brought to notice, and must frankly admit that I have not witnessed the least _permanent_ benefit from any one of these. There are different forms of the disease described in books, but my experience has been that these are simply external or special manifestations, all resulting from the same single cause, determined for the special locality in the system of the particular organ attacked. _Once a leper, always a leper_, is the sad outcome of my many years close observation, let the treatment be what it may. It behoves us, therefore, as human beings, simply to do all in our power, in whatever part of the world leprosy prevails, to establish retreats in which its victims can be housed in seclusion, apart from intercourse with the general public, where they can obtain proper shelter, be provided with suitable food and clothing, and where medical comforts can be placed at their disposal. All such institutions should be built and conducted on the best sanitary hygienic principles; each being suited to its own special locality and class of inmates. By these means assuredly will the disease cease to extend, and thus, in all probability, ultimately be exterminated. This happy result had been accomplished in instances of other allied diseases, simply from the