1867

Royal College of Physicians’ Report on how to control leprosy in Britain’s West Indian colonies, essentially the work of Gavin Milroy, a critic of the quarantine system. The report, preceded by several interim reports, declared leprosy non-contagious, “essentially a constitutional disorder . . . best tackled by improving the health, diet and living conditions of native populations.” This reflects the fact that, in 1850s and 60s, “anti-contagionists had the upper hand in the long-running debates with contagionists over public policy. The failure of quarantine measure to halt the spread of cholera in 1848-9 had resulted in a number of diseases being refashioned as non-contagious and therefore best prevented by environmental and sanitary reform” (Edmond, 53-54). As such, the Report of 1867 reaffirmed the findings of the Norwegian Official Report on Leprosy of 1847 (58). And it provided reassurance to Britian’s colonial administrators and settlers that “Europeans were virtually immune to the disease. . . The 1867 Report officially encouraged the idea that leprosy was a native disease, transmitted indigenously, and unlikely to jump the barriers of race or geography” (57). In 1889, Morrell Mackenzie dismissed the 1867 Report as a “vast edifice of errors” (92). The Report’s findings were cast aside by the Berlin International Leprosy Conference of 1897, and also by the Royal College’s new Leprosy Committee in 1898; the new Committee acknowledged that the 1867 Report’s findings were “ill-advised” and that the communicability of leprosy by direct or indirect means was “an established fact” (108).