DAMIEN DE VEUSTER, da'inyiiNI de ve stige', JOSEPH (1840-S9). A Belgian priest of the Roman Catholic Church, better known as Father Damien, and distinguished as a mission ary to the leper settlement on the island of Molokai, Hawaii. He was horn at Louvain, studied theology at the university there, entered the Society of the Sacred hearts of Jesus and Mary in 1803, was appointed to the mission to the Hawaiian Islands, and until 1873 performed the customary duties of a missionary priest. In that year he was sent, at his own request. to the Molokai settlement established by the Hawaiian Government in 1S65 for the enforced segregation of lepers and their maintenance at public expense in the villages of Kalaupapa and Kalawao. At his arrival in the island physical conditions among the lepers were thoroughly wretched. He found the water-supply unfit, the food bad, the people ill-washed, ill-clothed, and ill-housed. Forthwith lie labored to obtain good water, wholesome food, suitable dwellings, medi cal assistance, and hospital accommodations. He organized religions worship. established schools, erected a general shop for leper trade. lent his own skilled hand to the building of the church at Ka laupapa, and even personally dug the graves of many of the hundreds of parishioners whom he buried. in the prosecu
tion of his work he gradually gathered about him priests, lay brethren, and nuns as as-:oci ates. in 1884 he perceived in the insensibility of his skin the sign of the approach of the disease, and could begin his sermons with the words, 'We lepers.' Ile finally succumbed to the concentra tion of the leprosy in his lungs. His simple, heroic life and death attracted wide notice, and, ill addition to the benefits secured by him for the immediate objects of his endeavors, led to agitation by Englishmen of the difficult leper problem in India. Many know his name chiefly through the famous Open Letter to the Reverend Dr. Hyde, written by Robert Louis Stevenson, first printed in the Sydney (New South Wales) Presbyterian of October •6, 18S9, and privately published at Sydney as a pamphlet in 1890. Consult Stoddard. The Lepers of Molokai (Notre Dame, 1885), and Father Pamphile, Life and Letters of Father Damien (London, 1689).