What a Leprosy Congress Should Be. 
ALBERT S. ASHMEAD, M. D., 
NEWYORK. Reprint from the Medical Herald, St- Joseph, Mo*, August, 1897 
What a Leprosy Congress Should Be. 
Br ALBERT S. ASHMEAD, M. D., New York. 
JN December, 1895, Dr. Goldschmidt and myself began to work for the 
formation of an international committee against leprosy. It was intended 
that every government should appoint an official delegate to become a 
member of a permanent committee. These delegates were to meet with a 
congress of leprologists, and representatives of the Church and Red Cross. 
After the congress had been held, it was thought that, if nothing else came 
out of it, this permanent committee would remain active forever after. 
Bearing in mind that the discovery of the leper bacillus has not done one 
thing for the solution of the universal leper problem ; that all the influence 
of missionaries has been of no avail; that the disease seems incurable, we 
thought that no other hope remained but the establishment of the only system 
which not only promises success, but allows us a certain expectation of it, 
that is isolation. This can only be done by edicts of every government 
issued simultaneously. To obtain these edicts, it was necessary to sound 
every government and find out whether it would be willing to appoint an 
official delegate to our congress, not to be a mere delegate to that congress 
alone, whose function should stop with the congress, but to form a body 
active, after the dissolution of the congress. Such efforts demanded time. 
While we were engaged in this work, and when we had already received 
many assurances of sympathy, and promises of governmental assistance, 
all of a sudden, Dr. Ehlers, of Copenhagen, without any reasonable idea of 
what our work was leading to, and what our purpose was, thinking that we 
were starting a mere Leprosy Congress, one of those medical congresses, of which the world has seen so many, with the approval of some Berlin 
men, sent out a precipitate invitation to all leprologists, to meet in confer- 
ence at Berlin ; and he expressly stated, publicly and in private corres- 
pondence, that he did not want government delegates in Berlin. Armauer 
Hansen also declared that he could not see what good such a committee 
could do. Neither of these men could understand what our real object was, 
and Hansen could not see why we did not issue our invitation at once. Had 
we intended to have a simple conference of learned men, and an ephemeral 
committee of official delegates, we could have issued our call long before Dr, 
Ehlers bethought himself of taking advantage of the necessary slowness of 
a very serious enterprise, and of issuing his hasty call for a very ordinary, 
and, by its very nature, fruitless debate. Even afterwards, when to pla- 
cate us, the Berlin committee deigned to send out invitations through the 
German government to other governments, to appoint official delegates, 
even then they could not get hold of the true idea of our congress. Their 
official delegates will be appointed, without any view to permanency. As 
soon as the congress closes its debate, the delegates will return home, and 
nothing more will be heard of them. The conference with its leprologists 
and delegates will have burst like a soap-bubble, after having shone a few 
days in all the colors of the rainbow. Had these men joined us, waited and 
worked with us patiently, we should have obtained that permanent com- 
mittee. At any rate it was an object worthy of all the energies of earnest 
men. The official delegates would have returned home, and each in his 
country, would have occupied a position, endowed with power to act in all 
matters of leprosy. Thus isolation, if ordered by the congress, would have 
been effectively declared to the world to be the only and sure means for the 
eradication of leprosy. These men, each in his own country, would have 
had authority for taking the measures suitable to their countries respec- 
tively. 
When the Conference of Berlin has burst, as I said, like a soap-bubble, 
the necessity for another serious, earnest, practical congress will be felt, a 
congress like the one which has been delineated above, and which Dr. 
Goldschmidt and myself have proposed and worked for. 
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