Leprosy Relief in India

The 1921 census gives 102,513 as the number of lepers in India, but mentions that this is short of the real number, as only conspicuous sufferers from this disease were likely to be enumerated by the untrained people who gathered the statistics. Recently, an estimate was made by the sanitation staff of a certain town in India that there were only six lepers in a certain ward of the town. Immediately after, a second survey made by skilled workers showed that there were at least 144 lepers (24 times the original figure) in that ward, and in all probability even more. It is not suggested that the 1921 census figure should be multiplied by 24 in order to arrive at the number of lepers, but we are safe in calculating that there are from one half to one million lepers in India. Leprosy is not a very fatal disease. Compared with malaria, tuberculosis and cholera tTiere are comparatively few deaths. But after all the death roll is not the only criterion of