The Leproserie in Atjeh — the leper-colony in Atjeh — was the colonial government’s form of care for lepers in the Gouvernement Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, instituted in the small leper-colonies at Bajan and elsewhere, and centralised after the pacification in the former military hospital at Sabang. The institution is the subject of Broersma’s chapter on the leper-colony at Bajan, and of his account of the lepers in the former military hospital at Sabang.
The Old Atjehnese Practice
It cost no trouble, Broersma writes, to get the Atjehnese to accept our help in the isolation of the lepers in his community. As many an Eastern people also in antiquity, the Atjehnese had a horror of lepers. In the book of Dr. Julius Jacobs on the family and kampong-life in Groot-Atjeh (1894) one can read that the sufferers in Groot-Atjeh were inexorably banished, and that they could withdraw to a particular kampong with sulphurous hot springs. How much the leper was banished appears from the fact that his immovable property fell to his family, and that his wife was reckoned legally divorced from him. The leper-kampong thus formed a small society of the wretched, in which, so far as the sufferers were able, fields, crafts and fishery were kept up. In Groot-Atjeh the disease did not yet occur so frequently as on the eastern coast, where Pidië and the Pasé-streek were worse afflicted.
The Small Colonies
At Bajan were four small sheds, of which one for women, providing place for fifteen people. Weekly a government doctor comes twice, looks at and treats the sick. The treatment is now the injection with Ecco, an oil in which, among other things, camphor sits. The remedy is comparatively new, and the experiences are still incomplete. The dose climbs gradually to a certain height, after which the injection is omitted for a time, then again a treatment with increasing dose, and so there are five rounds. Good result has already been had, and the sick certainly feel more comfortable. There are gardens by the sheds, by which some labour is possible. The only supervision that is always present is that of a mandoer, and more is not needed. The people are free and can disappear when they wish. Of running away there is little chance, now that the Atjehnese kampong closes itself to the leper.
The Central Colony at Sabang
In Atjeh, besides that of Bajan, there are still leper-colonies; the presence of many doctors in the gewest as a result of the spread of military power makes the medical supervision of the lepers easy. There was already a plan drawn up for a central leper-colony in the gewest, but the execution has been struck from the agenda for reasons of economy. One need not mourn it, now that the provision leaves little or nothing to be wished. There is, Broersma thinks, even something to be said for there being a number of small institutions, because now no distance need be the obstacle for the leper to withdraw. A central institution also asks for more permanent personnel and more expensive establishment than a number of small colonies on Inlandse-simple lines. Lepers are housed in the former military hospital at Sabang, where they are cared for under the supervision of a government doctor by Ambonese nurses. There are about fifty patients admitted. Consideration has been given to transferring the care of that institution to the Leger des Heils (Salvation Army).
See Also
- Bajan
- Sabang
- Dr. Julius Jacobs
- Het familie- en kampongleven op Groot-Atjeh
- Leger des Heils
- Pidië
- Pasé
- Verkenningen in Atjeh (1923)
- 1894
Source
Verkenningen in Atjeh, by Dr. R. Broersma (De Locomotief, October 1923), chapters IV, XV, ‘Het hout van Langsa’ and ‘Groot-Atjeh’, pp. 24–26, 104.
Source
Verkenningen in Atjeh, by Dr. R. Broersma (De Locomotief, October 1923); Atjeh Patchouli-Olie, by Ir. W. Spoon (1932), where applicable.