CARVILLE'S CURE

A social and medical history of Louisiana’s leprosarium, the only such operation in the continental U.S. during the 20th century.

From 1894 until 1999, on the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, stood the Louisiana Leper Home, later known as Carville. This is the story of the patients, families, and caregivers who contended with Hansen’s disease, also known as leprosy, one of the world’s most dreaded and misunderstood illnesses. In this fine history, by turns heartbreaking and infuriating, NPR correspondent Fessler begins with the ramshackle sugar plantation that was chosen to house the nation’s leprotic population and then moves on to the nature and progress of the disease—in particular, the societal perception of leprosy, which hasn’t changed much from its biblical depiction “as God’s way of punishing sinners by condemning them to a life of suffering and scorn.” This stigma has always clung to those with the disease, and it has been used as a convenient justification for prejudice against immigrants. “Asian immigrants, already a target for those who believed they were taking Americans’ jobs, were especially suspect,” writes the author. Without descending into melodrama, Fessler paints a clear picture of a class of people who were confined at Carville typically for life, isolated, stripped of their identities (since it might cause backlashes against their families) and their civil rights. The author also shows how Carville became a refuge for its patients as well as a rare integrated institution in the Jim Crow South. Vignettes of the patients, some tracked over decades, humanize the story, as does the depiction of the Daughters of Charity, who cared for the patients and “would prove to be some of [their] strongest allies in their fight for more freedom and rights.” Fessler also follows medical developments to treat the disease, which still has the same old stigmas of discrimination, superstition, and ignorance.

A caustic story told with empathy and a sharp eye for society’s intolerances.