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The leprosarium was inaugurated on July 19th in the presence of the "Cultusminister Dr. Bosse" and the "Oberpräsident Graf von Bismarck".
In the north of town the leprosarium is situated in the midst of a spruce- and birch nursery, within highly fenced gardens on an area of about 150 steps squared. The main building is subdivided into three units: men's ward, women's ward, and the administration; the latter is connected with the two other wards. The ensemble is made of bright bricks with a watch turret in the middle, whilst the front of the administration building is adorned with the painting "Christ cures a leper" which was designed at the Berlin Arts and Crafts Museum and executed with sgraffito technique by Otto March. The outbuildings in the background were also built of bricks.



The leprosarium viewed from the south.



The leprosarium is equipped for eight men and eight women. Both wards offer the same facility. The common room with three windows is a big room which the patients use for needlework, as much as their health condition allows. In the midst of the room are two large and two small yellow tables and several iron chairs; the flooring is covered with linoleum. From the day room four doors directly lead to just as many sick-rooms. Each is outfitted for to take two sick persons. Chairs, bedside tables and bedsteads are made of iron to improve the disinfection possibility. In addition, next to the day-room is the washing room which is connected with the bathroom. The walls in the sick rooms are painted with a brown oil- or wax paint up to 2 m. Due to a very useful device the iron ovens provide a continuous supply of fresh air.

Patient's room
Common room for the sick persons

A 2m wide heatable passageway whose flooring is covered with colored cement ashlars leads to the administration building with mother superior's two rooms, who is in charge of the nursing and administration, and the doctor's study (Dr. Urbanowicz from Memel) who not attends permanently but arrives depending on need for the inspection of the sick persons In this room are the required apparatus for the treatment of the sick persons, a support frame for the physical examination of the patients, surgical flatware for amputations and an apparatus for the pure culture of microorganisms. It is foreseeable, that a proportionally quick and mainly efficiently final result will be achieved here too, same as the considerably successes, which already were realized in Norway, by means of a strictly isolation of the sick persons during the campaign against the leprosy.


Source: "Illustrirte Zeitung" - Leipzig, August 17th, 1899.

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