The most ancient and emotion-laden disease that the American Medical authorities had to deal with was leprosy, a disease that has been said to be as old as the world itself (Chapman, 1982, p. 4).
Hansen's disease, more commonly known as leprosy, has always been surrounded by fear, disgust, pity, and curiosity. It is a disease that is not widely understood by the general population, even today, and is cursed by long-standing myths, folklore, and images. This lack of knowledge and false understanding caused, and continues to cause, the leprosy patient to be unfairly stigmatized and rejected. The "stigma of leprosy is often a greater handicap than the burden of the disease itself" (Chapman, 1982, p. xiv). This paper will attempt to clarify the basic facts surrounding leprosy, its biology, symptoms, and history, and show that one of the most important aspects of a leprosy patient's therapy is destigmatization and acceptance by the masses. The leper must be viewed and treated as a human being, with care and sensitivity. One must look past the physical deformities and changes and experience the person underneath. First, the basic biology of the bacterium causing leprosy and how the disease manifests itself in the human host will be addressed. Following this, the paper will focus on the history of leprosy, the public's reaction to it, the church's reaction to it, and the life that the leper himself leads.
In 1874, Dr. G. H. Armauer Hansen discovered the bacillus responsible for leprosy, mycobacterium leprae (Brody, 1974, p. 22), a rod-shaped, Gram positive bacterium. (There has been a recent trend away from the terminology "leprosy", "leper", and "leprous" and toward the use of this less stigmatizing term, "Hansen's disease". This is an admirable effort to cast off the negative connotations associated with the old terminology). This bacterium is peculiar because it cannot be cultivated in a test tube. In order to prove th...