| Abstrakt: |
There is ample evidence that there are distinct clinical variations of leprosy in different world areas.1 The role of host susceptibility or resistance, racial factors, and climatic and other geographical conditions in producing these variations remains an unsettled problem.2 In this paper a correlation will be made between one variant, alopecia leprotica, and the religious customs and folklore of the countries influenced by Buddhism. Fortunately, a natural experiment on babies is found in certain regions of the world where Buddhism is practiced, allowing the leprologist to use babies as a comparative test group of the contagiousness of leprosy, with the babies in the remainder of the world as controls. The basis of the experiment rests in the widespread custom among the Buddhists of shaving the heads of the newborn. Evidence will be presented to show that leprosy is contracted during infancy or childhood and not primarily in maturity. |
