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Show cannot be cured, but it can be arrested quite successfully through proper care and nursing, like tuberculosis, which is produced by a similar organism. The city of New York, for instance, does not confine its lepers, but only supervises their home living conditions. con-ditions. "In a leper colony only about a third of the people appear to be ill or crippled. The rest look and feel like healthy individuals," Dr. Daines stated. Leprosy does not kill, he added, because it does not attack the vital organs. "Lepers "Lep-ers die of the same diseases that normal people do." & THE WHITE DEATH Leprosy in Utah? Yes, but not in people! In an inconspicuous little laboratory labor-atory in the University of Utah medical building important research re-search in leprosy is being carried on by Dr. L. I. Daines, dean of the Medical School. Rats are used in his experiments experi-ments because the rat leprosy germ i3 similar to the human "bug," and it is hoped that if a way can be found to cure the disease in rats, the same treatment treat-ment can be applied to human beings. The chief difficulty in all research re-search on leprosy, Dr. Daines stated, is that although the germ which causes it can be seen through a microscope, it cannot be grown in laboratory culture for purposes of experimentation. Nor can it be discovered how the disease is contracted. Contrary to popular belief, leprosy lep-rosy cannot be "caught" by touching touch-ing an affected person. Much secondary evidence has been accumulated ac-cumulated on methods of spreading spread-ing the disease, but until scientists scient-ists learn to grow the organism experimentally nothing definite can be learned. It is evidently a disease of unhygienic living conditions, con-ditions, Dr. Daines says, and most commonly appears first on exposed ex-posed parts of the body, as on the hands or face. In rocky countries where natives go barefoot, bare-foot, it first affects the feet. For this reason it is thought that the germ of the disease must enter the body through cuts and scratches. Dr. Daines began his interesting interest-ing research in 1929 when a disease dis-ease of the skin of Utah cattle was brought to his attention. Working with this disease in conjunction con-junction with a graduate student. Harold Austin, who is now a practicing physician in Provo, the germ was grown experimentally in the laboratory and found to be much like the organism producing pro-ducing human leprosy. Credit for this work, Dr. Daines recounted, must go entirely to Dr. Austin, since his excellent research was responsible for bringing the project pro-ject to the attention of the United States Public Health Service, at whose request the leprosy study was undertaken. The study has taken Dr. Daines to the leper colonies of Louisiana and Hawaii, where he has lived and carried on his research. The life of the lepers in these colonies, he says, is as near to normal family living conditions as it is possible to bring, t. Lepers may marry, usually inside the colony, but sometimes outside, and they are allowed to have children. Of 160 non-leperous people who married mar-ried lepers in one colony, only four per cent contracted the disease. dis-ease. None of the children of these unions, or of any others, have the disease, if taken from the parents' care at birth. In one famous instance a leper colony col-ony transplanted through the practice of more hygienic living At the present time the disease |