3-075-009 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Dinner in aid of a National Leprosy Fund, presided over by the Prince of Wales, 1890. 'Alarming and distressing accounts of the prevalence of leprosy in India and some of our East Asiatic colonies, in the West Indies, in Russia, Norway, Spain and Portugal, and on the shores of the Mediterranean, have been published...It is now proposed, by raising a sufficient fund, after providing for the medical treatment and care of lepers throughout the British Empire, that a sum of money shall be set apart...for the foundation of scholarships for two students - one to make the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe his field of research; and the other to go abroad and study the disease in India, China, the Colonies, and elsewhere. For these purposes, at the dinner of subscribers to the "National Leprosy Fund," after an earnest speech of some length by the Prince of Wales, additional contributions were made to the amount of £2500, raising the fund to £7000, and £5000 more is wanted. It was estimated bv [the Prince] that there are considerably over 200,000 lepers in India, and that, in 1887, not more than 2000 were provided for in the leper asylums, or in special leper hospital wards, of which there are only twenty-three in all India...'. From "Illustrated London News", 1890.