Memoir on leprosy in Syria / by John Wortabet.

  • Wortabet, John, 1827-1908.
Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memoir on leprosy in Syria / by John Wortabet. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Memoir on Leprosy in Syria. By John Wortabet, M.D., Bey rout.1 Introduction. Leprosy has recently attracted a considerable degree of attention among medical men. An awful scourge which afflicts the human body, highly ancient in its history, unknown in the largest part of Europe at the present time, and thus removed from the field of modern investigation and discovery, it has become a subject of great interest to scientific labourers. To the private contributions of various writers, chiefly the valuable work of Danielssen and Boeck of Norway, the British Government has been the means of adding a new and important book. At the request of Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Colonies, the Royal College of Physicians issued a series of interrogatories which was sent to medical men in different parts of the world. The result was the accumulation of a vast amount of information with which was incorporated a number of highly valuable documents, such as the conclusions drawn by the committee of the College from an examination of the entire evidence submitted to them on the subject-matter of each interrogatory, the account of post-mortem examinations made by Dr. Carter of Bombay, and the notes of Professor Erasmus Wilson on nineteen cases of leprosy which had fallen under his observation. The Report of the College was printed at the expense of the British government, and will long be a rich treasure for reference on this disease. 1 This instructive paper was sent by the author to me a few months ago, with the expressed desire to have it made known to the British medical public. Con- taining the results of a lengthened personal experience of the disease in different Asiatic countries, it will be found a valuable contribution to its general history in that region of the world. Dr. Wortabet, in reply to the interrogatories of the College of Physicians in 1863, communicated some interesting remarks on leprosy in Aleppo; these will be found at page 57 of the report of the College. The reader will now be enabled to compare the conclusions which a highly intelligent observer in the East has formed respecting various points about this obscure and momentous malady with those at which I have arrived from my recent opportuni- ties of studying it in the West, and which are recorded in my report recently issued by the Colonial Office and presented to Parliament.—Gavin Miluoy, M.D. L