A Disease Apart: Leprosy in the Modern World - Hardcover

Gould, Tony

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312305028 ISBN 13: 9780312305024

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2005

Synopsis

This fascinating cultural and medical history of leprosy enriches our understanding of a still-feared biblical disease.

It is a condition shrouded for centuries in mystery, legend, and religious fanaticism. Societies the world over have vilified its sufferers: by the sheer accident of mycobacterial infection, they have been condemned to exile and imprisonment—illness itself considered evidence of moral taint.

Over the last 200 years, the story of leprosy has witnessed dramatic reversals in terms of both scientific theory and public opinion. In A DISEASE APART, Tony Gould traces the history of this compelling period through the lives of individual men and women: intrepid doctors, researchers, and missionaries, and a vast spectrum of patients.

We meet such pioneers of treatment as the Norwegian microbe hunter, Armauer Hansen. Though Hansen discovered the leprosy bacillus in l873, the 'heredity vs. contagion' debate raged on for decades. Meanwhile, across the world, Belgian Catholic missionary Father Damien became an international celebrity tending to his stricken flock at the Hawaiian settlement of Molokai. He contracted the disease himself. To the British, leprosy posed an "imperial danger" to their sprawling colonial system. In the l920s Sir Leonard Rogers of the Indian Medical Service found that the ancient Hindu treatment of chaulmoogra oil could be used in an injectable form.

The Cajun bayou saw the inspiring rise of leprosy’s most zealous campaigner of all: a patient. At Carville, Louisiana, a Jewish Texan pharmacist named Stanley Stein was transformed by leprosy into an eloquent editor and writer. He ultimately became a thorn in the side of the U.S. Public Heath Department and a close friend of Tallulah Bankhead.

The personalities met on this journey are remarkable and their stories unfold against the backgrounds of Norway, Hawaii, the Philippines, Japan, South Africa, Canada, Nigeria, Nepal and Louisiana. Although since the l950s drugs treatments have been able to cure cases caught early—and arrest advanced cases—leprosy remains a subject mired in ignorance.

In this superb and enlightened book, Tony Gould throws light into the shadows.

About this title

About the Author

TONY GOULD served in the British military, then studied English at Cambridge. He has worked as a BBC radio producer and as literary editor of New Society and the New Statesman. His books include A Summer Plague: Polio and Its Survivors and Inside Outsider: The Life and Times of Colin MacInnes, winner of the 1984 PEN Silver Pen award.

Reviews

For millennia, sufferers of Hansen's disease, commonly known as leprosy, have endured not only the illness' devastating effects but also unspeakable cruelty at the hands of those around them. Indeed, some of the worst offenders have been those charged with caring for the afflicted. Gould says it is the combination of leprosy's mysterious causes and its horrific physical manifestations that inspires such behavior. In this thoughtful book, he traces leprosy's recent history by examining the lives of people who have made a difference, ranging from household names like Father Damien to such lesser-known heroes as Stanley Stein, who waged a victorious battle against the U.S. Public Health Service. Despite what appear to be great strides--the author cites leprosarium closures from declining incidence of the disease in industrialized nations--Gould claims the battle is far from over. For there is no cure, no preventive vaccine, nor any good idea yet as to either cause or how leprosy is spread. Moreover, leprosy still occurs in many areas of the Third World. Donna Chavez
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312305028
• ISBN 13: 9780312305024
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 432