The clinical evaluation of drugs for leprosy

This paper attempts to clarify the methodology of trials of reputedly mycobactericidal drugs in leprosy, by isolating the factors that have in the past led to confusion. Leprosy is not only a slightly contagious disease; it is also the sum of immunological reactions, and the outcome of consequential peripheral neuropathies.

Clinical evaluation of drug efficacy may be impossibly difficult or misleading, and must be supplemented by regular calculation of the Morphological Index. Many manifestations of the disease are related to the persistence in the tissues of acid-fast debris from dead Myco. leprae, which is not removed by the normal processes of phagocytosis.