File:Opu. CASE V. (Photograph I).jpg

English: CASE V. (Photograph I). The original photograph from which this book illustration is derived was taken by Henry L. Chase in 1878 as a part of the "Report of the Special Sanitary Committee on the State of the Leper Settlement at Kalawao". Image was republished in the The New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal in April 1880 as part of a later medical examination by John Harrison Bemiss in 1879.

CASE V. (Photograph 1.) Opu, female, age 38 years, native of Kauai. Parents dead, not certain of what disease. Opu, before she was married was paralyzed. In 1870 disease made its first appearance, was afterwards put in hospital in Honolulu, and from there sent to Kalawao. Her appetite is good but she is unable to move around much. Her face, hands and feet, covered with scars. Skin covered with dark dry cracking spots. Was vaccinated by a physician on Kauai, result a good scar; two years afterwards taken with a paralytic stroke in the legs. Since she was photographed the disease has made fearful progress.

The photograph illustrates very finely the hypertrophied and infiltrated condition of the skin of face and lobes of ears. It is well to note also the absence of disease in her family, and the fact that she became affected at least with a nervous disorder of an uncertain character, subsequent to having been vaccinated.

The committee report says:

Opu, a woman, forty-nine years of age, and three years at the Settlement, did not show much indication of leprosy on first arrival ; but the symptoms of the disease developed very rapidly after her arrival at Kalawao. Neither of her parents, nor any of her relatives had contracted the disease. The case was photographed and marked No. 1.