Mending and Making: The Work of the Leprosy Mission

This profusely illustrated little book sets out to explain the work of the Mission to Lepers, now The Leprosy Mission. This work is reproduced by permission of the The Leprosy Mission. This book may be used for free educational purposes, but not reprinted for profit without permission from the copyright holder.

W.H.P. & M. Anderson, Mending and Making. London: The Mission to Lepers, n.d. Pbk. pp.63. [Click to visit the download page]

Contents

• Foreword
• Reading to Perish
• A “City” of Compassion
• Settling their own affairs
• Must I Become like These?
• When Mercy Smiles
• Out of their Poverty
• The Doctor Babu and his Patients
• Giving them a Chance
• The Gift of “Perfect Soundness”

Foreword

It is startling to many people to learn that there are great numbers of lepers in the world. There are more lepers probably in Asia than any other continent, but Africa and South America are sorely affected. Leprosy is also prevalent in the numerous islands of the Pacific Ocean, and few, if any, countries of the world are quite free of it. The disease finds most favourable conditions for spreading among people of low standards of living, because of their poverty and their ignorance of even the simplest laws of health.

Vigorous measures against leprosy have been possible in the Hawaiian and Philip-pine Islands, and if no new cases should be imported the prospect of those islands becoming free of leprosy is hopeful. No country, however, especially in these days of freedom of movement of people from one land to another, is free from the menace of the disease, particularly those countries most easy of access from the seriously infected parts of Asia. In lands like our own, where higher standards of living obtain, with strictly enforced health laws, the danger of leprosy gaining a foothold is negligible….