01614nas a2200217   4500000000100000008004100001260001300042653002400055653001300079653002600092653001100118653001000129653001200139100001300151245006200164856004100226300001100267490000700278520109700285022001401382       2004                            d  c2004 Sep10aAdvisory Committees10aCensuses10aHistory, 19th Century10aHumans10aIndia10aleprosy1 aPandya S00aNineteenth century Indian leper censuses and the doctors.  uhttp://ila.ilsl.br/pdfs/v72n3a07.pdf  a306-160 v723 a<p>This study describes the circumstances under which enumerations of "lepers" were conducted in India in the late 19th century, and the ideological biases of the respective investigators and the meanings that they read into the statistics. This report focuses on the Bombay Presidency leprosy returns of 1867, examined in 1871 by Henry Vandyke Carter, and the decennial nation-wide population census of 1871-1872, 1881, and 1891, in which the leprosy-affected, among other infirm persons, were also enumerated. The evidence examined includes the investigators' reports and other published and unpublished contemporaneous documents. These censuses were undertaken at a time when the etiology of leprosy was a major controversy, but the evidence here indicates that the efforts to clarify the etiology and estimate the virulence of the disease in India by means of statistics were animated by the desire to justify and embellish pre-conceptions. Despite the claim that they were necessary for leprosy control, the censuses, for various reasons, were not utilized towards that end in India.</p>  a0148-916X