From the 1860s until the early Japanese colonial period, the treatment of leprosy was mainly taken on by churches established after the opening of Taiwan’s ports. ​Dr. George Gushue-Taylor (戴仁壽) of Mackay Memorial Hospital dedicated a lot of energy to treating ​leprosy. In 1925, he set up a leprosy clinic room in the hospital and in 1927 a clinic independent of the hospital devoted to leprosy. He also introduced Chaulmoogra oil, a newly-developed medicine to treat the disease, into Taiwan and advocated for the establishment of a ​leprosy sanatorium.

 

  Because the Meiji Government of Japan considered leprosy to be a symbol of backwardness, control of the disease became an issue for modernizing the state. At the beginning of twentieth century, Japan put the prevention and cure of leprosy into its national sanitation policy and then transferred this attention to leprosy to Taiwan and Korea. According to guidelines described in About Prevention of Leprosy (1907), quarantine was adopted as a policy to contain people with leprosy in Japan. Following these regulations, ​the Taiwan Sotokufu started to formulate an official ​leprosy policy at the end of the 1920s. In 1928, the ​Taiwan Sotokufu​ chose​ a site called Dingpojiao (頂坡角) in the town of Xinzhuang (新莊) and construction took place from 1929-1930 resulting in the establishment of Lo-Sheng Sanatorium.​ ​In December 1930, the Lo-Sheng ​Leprosy ​Sanatorium started to operate. During the Japanese colonial period, Lo-Sheng remained the only official institution to quarantine and house people with leprosy in Taiwan.

 

  At the beginning, Lo-Sheng’s director advocated limited segregation. In April 1931, however, Japan instituted the ​Leprosy Prevention Law and started to enforce strict segregation of people with leprosy on the Japanese mainland.​ In June 1934, the Taiwan Sotokufu applied the law by enforcing strict segregation in​ Lo-Sheng. At that time, local governments started to arrest people with leprosy and force them into the sanatorium. Inhabitants who left the sanatorium without permission were punished. The government instilled the public with the belief that ​leprosy was an easily-transmitted infectious disease. As a result, fear of leprosy and a negative image toward the illness intensified in society.