Part 5 (1/2)
That a leper is unclean, however, should be insisted upon; and the segregation of lepers, from what little is known of the disease, should be rigidly maintained. On the other hand, the awful horror with which the leper has been regarded in the past, and the frightful treatment he has received, have been unnecessary and cruel. In order to dispel some of the popular misapprehensions of leprosy, I want to tell something of the relations between the lepers and non-lepers as I observed them at Molokai. On the morning after our arrival Charmian and I attended a shoot of the Kalaupapa Rifle Club, and caught our first glimpse of the democracy of affliction and alleviation that obtains. The club was just beginning a prize shoot for a cup put up by Mr. McVeigh, who is also a member of the club, as also are Dr. Goodhue and Dr. Hollmann, the resident physicians (who, by the way, live in the Settlement with their wives). All about us, in the shooting booth, were the lepers. Lepers and non-lepers were using the same guns, and all were rubbing shoulders in the confined s.p.a.ce. The majority of the lepers were Hawaiians.
Sitting beside me on a bench was a Norwegian. Directly in front of me, in the stand, was an American, a veteran of the Civil War, who had fought on the Confederate side. He was sixty-five years of age, but that did not prevent him from running up a good score. Strapping Hawaiian policemen, lepers, khaki-clad, were also shooting, as were Portuguese, Chinese, and kokuas-the latter are native helpers in the Settlement who are non-lepers. And on the afternoon that Charmian and I climbed the two-thousand-foot _pali_ and looked our last upon the Settlement, the superintendent, the doctors, and the mixture of nationalities and of diseased and non-diseased were all engaged in an exciting baseball game.
Not so was the leper and his greatly misunderstood and feared disease treated during the middle ages in Europe. At that time the leper was considered legally and politically dead. He was placed in a funeral procession and led to the church, where the burial service was read over him by the officiating clergyman. Then a spadeful of earth was dropped upon his chest and he was dead-living dead. While this rigorous treatment was largely unnecessary, nevertheless, one thing was learned by it. Leprosy was unknown in Europe until it was introduced by the returning Crusaders, whereupon it spread slowly until it had seized upon large numbers of the people. Obviously, it was a disease that could be contracted by contact. It was a contagion, and it was equally obvious that it could be eradicated by segregation. Terrible and monstrous as was the treatment of the leper in those days, the great lesson of segregation was learned. By its means leprosy was stamped out.
And by the same means leprosy is even now decreasing in the Hawaiian Islands. But the segregation of the lepers on Molokai is not the horrible nightmare that has been so often exploited by _yellow_ writers.
In the first place, the leper is not torn ruthlessly from his family.
When a suspect is discovered, he is invited by the Board of Health to come to the Kalihi receiving station at Honolulu. His fare and all expenses are paid for him. He is first pa.s.sed upon by microscopical examination by the bacteriologist of the Board of Health. If the _bacillus leprae_ is found, the patient is examined by the Board of Examining Physicians, five in number. If found by them to be a leper, he is so declared, which finding is later officially confirmed by the Board of Health, and the leper is ordered straight to Molokai. Furthermore, during the thorough trial that is given his case, the patient has the right to be represented by a physician whom he can select and employ for himself. Nor, after having been declared a leper, is the patient immediately rushed off to Molokai. He is given ample time, weeks, and even months, sometimes, during which he stays at Kalihi and winds up or arranges all his business affairs. At Molokai, in turn, he may be visited by his relatives, business agents, etc., though they are not permitted to eat and sleep in his house. Visitors' houses, kept ”clean,”
are maintained for this purpose.
I saw an ill.u.s.tration of the thorough trial given the suspect, when I visited Kalihi with Mr. Pinkham, president of the Board of Health. The suspect was an Hawaiian, seventy years of age, who for thirty-four years had worked in Honolulu as a pressman in a printing office. The bacteriologist had decided that he was a leper, the Examining Board had been unable to make up its mind, and that day all had come out to Kalihi to make another examination.
When at Molokai, the declared leper has the privilege of re-examination, and patients are continually coming back to Honolulu for that purpose.
The steamer that took me to Molokai had on board two returning lepers, both young women, one of whom had come to Honolulu to settle up some property she owned, and the other had come to Honolulu to see her sick mother. Both had remained at Kalihi for a month.
The Settlement of Molokai enjoys a far more delightful climate than even Honolulu, being situated on the windward side of the island in the path of the fresh north-east trades. The scenery is magnificent; on one side is the blue sea, on the other the wonderful wall of the _pali_, receding here and there into beautiful mountain valleys. Everywhere are gra.s.sy pastures over which roam the hundreds of horses which are owned by the lepers. Some of them have their own carts, rigs, and traps. In the little harbour of Kalaupapa lie fis.h.i.+ng boats and a steam launch, all of which are privately owned and operated by lepers. Their bounds upon the sea are, of course, determined: otherwise no restriction is put upon their sea-faring. Their fish they sell to the Board of Health, and the money they receive is their own. While I was there, one night's catch was four thousand pounds.
And as these men fish, others farm. All trades are followed. One leper, a pure Hawaiian, is the boss painter. He employs eight men, and takes contracts for painting buildings from the Board of Health. He is a member of the Kalaupapa Rifle Club, where I met him, and I must confess that he was far better dressed than I. Another man, similarly situated, is the boss carpenter. Then, in addition to the Board of Health store, there are little privately owned stores, where those with shopkeeper's souls may exercise their peculiar instincts. The a.s.sistant Superintendent, Mr. Waiamau, a finely educated and able man, is a pure Hawaiian and a leper. Mr. Bartlett, who is the present storekeeper, is an American who was in business in Honolulu before he was struck down by the disease. All that these men earn is that much in their own pockets.
If they do not work, they are taken care of anyway by the territory, given food, shelter, clothes, and medical attendance. The Board of Health carries on agriculture, stock-raising, and dairying, for local use, and employment at fair wages is furnished to all that wish to work.
They are not compelled to work, however, for they are the wards of the territory. For the young, and the very old, and the helpless there are homes and hospitals.
Major Lee, an American and long a marine engineer for the Inter Island Steams.h.i.+p Company, I met actively at work in the new steam laundry, where he was busy installing the machinery. I met him often, afterwards, and one day he said to me:
”Give us a good breeze about how we live here. For heaven's sake write us up straight. Put your foot down on this chamber-of-horrors rot and all the rest of it. We don't like being misrepresented. We've got some feelings. Just tell the world how we really are in here.”
Man after man that I met in the Settlement, and woman after woman, in one way or another expressed the same sentiment. It was patent that they resented bitterly the sensational and untruthful way in which they have been exploited in the past.
In spite of the fact that they are afflicted by disease, the lepers form a happy colony, divided into two villages and numerous country and seaside homes, of nearly a thousand souls. They have six churches, a Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation building, several a.s.sembly halls, a band stand, a race-track, baseball grounds, shooting ranges, an athletic club, numerous glee clubs, and two bra.s.s bands.
”They are so contented down there,” Mr. Pinkham told me, ”that you can't drive them away with a shot-gun.”
This I later verified for myself. In January of this year, eleven of the lepers, on whom the disease, after having committed certain ravages, showed no further signs of activity, were brought back to Honolulu for re-examination. They were loath to come; and, on being asked whether or not they wanted to go free if found clean of leprosy, one and all answered, ”Back to Molokai.”
In the old days, before the discovery of the leprosy bacillus, a small number of men and women, suffering from various and wholly different diseases, were adjudged lepers and sent to Molokai. Years afterward they suffered great consternation when the bacteriologists declared that they were not afflicted with leprosy and never had been. They fought against being sent away from Molokai, and in one way or another, as helpers and nurses, they got jobs from the Board of Health and remained. The present jailer is one of these men. Declared to be a non-leper, he accepted, on salary, the charge of the jail, in order to escape being sent away.
At the present moment, in Honolulu, there is a bootblack. He is an American negro. Mr. McVeigh told me about him. Long ago, before the bacteriological tests, he was sent to Molokai as a leper. As a ward of the state he developed a superlative degree of independence and fomented much petty mischief. And then, one day, after having been for years a perennial source of minor annoyances, the bacteriological test was applied, and he was declared a non-leper.
”Ah, ha!” chortled Mr. McVeigh. ”Now I've got you! Out you go on the next steamer and good riddance!”
But the negro didn't want to go. Immediately he married an old woman, in the last stages of leprosy, and began pet.i.tioning the Board of Health for permission to remain and nurse his sick wife. There was no one, he said pathetically, who could take care of his poor wife as well as he could.
But they saw through his game, and he was deported on the steamer and given the freedom of the world. But he preferred Molokai. Landing on the leeward side of Molokai, he sneaked down the _pali_ one night and took up his abode in the Settlement. He was apprehended, tried and convicted of trespa.s.s, sentenced to pay a small fine, and again deported on the steamer with the warning that if he trespa.s.sed again, he would be fined one hundred dollars and be sent to prison in Honolulu. And now, when Mr. McVeigh comes up to Honolulu, the bootblack s.h.i.+nes his shoes for him and says:
”Say, Boss, I lost a good home down there. Yes, sir, I lost a good home.” Then his voice sinks to a confidential whisper as he says, ”Say, Boss, can't I go back? Can't you fix it for me so as I can go back?”
He had lived nine years on Molokai, and he had had a better time there than he has ever had, before and after, on the outside.
As regards the fear of leprosy itself, nowhere in the Settlement among lepers, or non-lepers, did I see any sign of it. The chief horror of leprosy obtains in the minds of those who have never seen a leper and who do not know anything about the disease. At the hotel at Waikiki a lady expressed shuddering amazement at my having the hardihood to pay a visit to the Settlement. On talking with her I learned that she had been born in Honolulu, had lived there all her life, and had never laid eyes on a leper. That was more than I could say of myself in the United States, where the segregation of lepers is loosely enforced and where I have repeatedly seen lepers on the streets of large cities.
Leprosy is terrible, there is no getting away from that; but from what little I know of the disease and its degree of contagiousness, I would by far prefer to spend the rest of my days in Molokai than in any tuberculosis sanatorium. In every city and county hospital for poor people in the United States, or in similar inst.i.tutions in other countries, sights as terrible as those in Molokai can be witnessed, and the sum total of these sights is vastly more terrible. For that matter, if it were given me to choose between being compelled to live in Molokai for the rest of my life, or in the East End of London, the East Side of New York, or the Stockyards of Chicago, I would select Molokai without debate. I would prefer one year of life in Molokai to five years of life in the above-mentioned cesspools of human degradation and misery.