Book Review: Carville's Cure: Leprosy, Stigma and the Fight for Justice by Pam Fessler

Carville’s Cure: Leprosy, Stigma and the Fight for Justice

by Pam Fessler (362.196 Fes)

 

When Pam Fessler, NPR correspondent, discovered that her father-in-law’s father was taken away from his family for having contracted Hansen’s disease (leprosy) during the 1902 campaign in the Philippines. (He, along with an unknown number of Americans, contracted the disease while in the Philippines, Japan and other parts of the world fighting for the US Military.) She decided that this was the book she needed to write. The Louisiana Leprosarium was established in 1894 and the state of Louisiana contracted with the Catholic Daughters of Charity to run the home. This was not a luxury hospital as many of the Tuberculosis Sanatoriums. This was a rundown mansion where the Sisters lived, and the slave shacks on the former plantation housed the victims of the disease.

 

Though the medical community could not come to a consensus on the disease, Hansen’s was not exceptionally contagious, unlike Tuberculosis. Also unlike TB the people who contracted Hansen’s were still considered at cause for their disease and treated as outcasts and often punished for having the disease. Ms. Fessler’s extensive research gives us an inside view to what life was like at the home and how individuals fought for their rights and for better accommodations. In 1921 the Federal Government took over running the home, though it brought better food, it did not necessarily bring better living conditions. The home did not close until 2005.

 

Though we learn a lot about what Hansen’s disease is and how the cure was discovered, we also learn that medical professionals still don’t know really how it’s spread. This book is mostly about the patients and the caretakers of Carville’s Leprosy Colony.

 

I’ve read some information about Hansen’s disease, but this is by far the most informational and fascinating look at the disease and how the patients were treated in America.

 

I highly recommend Carville’s Cure to people who like history books, social justice books, and medical history.

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Pox: An American History by Michael Willrich, The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic — and How it Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World by Steven Johnson, or The Radium Girls: The Scary But True Story of the Poison That Made People Glow in the Dark by Kate Moore.]

[ publisher’s official Carville’s Cure web page ] | [ official Pamela Fessler Twitter feed ]

 

Recommended by Marcy G.
South Branch Library

 

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