Tag: Leprosy Pictures

Leprosy Pictures

For hundreds of years, even medical professionals responded in fear of the infectious disease. Because of the misunderstandings and stigma associated with leprosy, very few people in history chose to study the bacterial infection. The few who did confront it now have millions of people benefiting from their courageous efforts.

In 1873, when people believed leprosy was the result of a curse or a judgement from the gods, Dr. A. Hansen, a physician from Norway, discovered that leprosy was caused by bacteria. He proved it was a contagious disease, like so many other plagues in our world. And when you find the cause of a disease, there is hope of finding a cure.

After that, a few remedies were found to treat leprosy patients, but the disease and its progression remained widely unknown and unexplored until the 1940s. At that time, new anti-leprosy drugs called sulfones were used to treat patients of Hansen’s Disease, but after the bacteria was eliminated from the person’s system, the disfigurement remained—and the discrimination.

In 1947, a world-renowned orthopedic surgeon working in India, Dr. Paul Brand, visited a leprosarium. Dr. Brand was appalled to uncover the lack of research performed regarding the physical deformation leprosy causes. In his book The Gift of Pain, coauthored with best-selling writer Philip Yancey, Dr. Brand records a conversation he had with a pioneer leprosy specialist, Dr. Bob Cochrane, at a leprosy sanitarium.

Dr. Brand learned from Dr. Cochrane that, although leprosy was crippling more people than polio or any other disease, few physicians had investigated the disease, and no orthopedist had researched leprosy and the disfigurement it produces. Most doctors at that time joined society in thinking leprosy was a curse from the gods, and as such, it was not a disease they paid attention to.

Leprosy Pictures