The Swatow Mission Hospital has for many years treated people with leprosy in the out-patients department, within recent years with increasingly encouraging results. We have on our books the names of some 400 patients suffering from leprosy, who have come to hospital within the last four years; of these about 80 are attending the clinic regularly.
During the last two years these patients have attended in spite of the decrees of the Municipal Authorities who have declared that ‘whether leprosy can be cured or not is still a disputable question,’ and that ‘light cases should be kept in hospital for treatment; they must be isolated.’ In view of these orders and the number of arrests that have been made – arrests usually followed by isolation in an over-crowded colony on an island in the bay, fit only for a few paupers with leprosy in an advanced an infectious stage – the regularity of the attendance has been extraordinarily good, and can only be put down to the deep-rooted conviction in the patients’ minds of the value of the treatment, and to the hope of continued progress and ultimate cure.
N D Fraser, “The Leprosy Clinic in the Swatow Mission Hospital” in James L Maxwell, “Ridding China of Leprosy” The China Medical Journal 44 (1930): 775.