Carville: Remembering Leprosy In America |
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Carville: Remembering Leprosy In America
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by Marcia Gaudet and James Carville
Sales Rank: 94856
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List Price: $28.00
$22.40
At Amazon
on 8-4-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Hard Cover with 221 pages
Published by: University Press of Mississippi December 2004
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 157806693X
ISBN 13 Number: 978-1578066933
Book Dimensions:
7 x 5.1 x 1 inches
Weighs: 10.4 ounces
Book Description
Mysterious and misunderstood, distorted by biblical imagery of disfigurement and uncleanness, Hansen's disease (or leprosy) has all but disappeared from America's consciousness. In Carville, Louisiana, the closed doors of the nation's last center for the treatment of leprosy hold stories of sadness, separation, and even strength in the face of what was once a life-wrenching diagnosis.
Drawn from interviews with living patients and extensive research in the leprosarium's archives, "Carville: Remembering Leprosy in America" tells the stories of former patients at the National Hansen's Disease Center. For over a century, from 1894 until 1999, Carville was the site of the only in-patient hospital in the continental United States for the treatment of Hansen's disease, which is the preferred designation for leprosy.
Patients --- exiled there by law for treatment and for separation from the rest of society --- reveal how they were able to cope with the devastating blow the diagnosis of leprosy dealt them. Leprosy was so frightening and so poorly understood that entire families would suffer and be shunned if one family member contracted the disease. When patients entered Carville, they typically left everything behind, including their legal names and their hopes for the future.
Former patients at Carville give their views of the outside world and of the culture they forged within the treatment center, which included married and individual living quarters, a bar, and even a jail. Those quarantined in the leprosarium created their own Mardi Gras celebrations, their own newspaper, and their own body of honored stories in which fellow sufferers of Hansen's disease prevailed over trauma and ostracism. Through their memories and stories, we see their very human quest for identity and endurance with dignity, humor, and grace.
Publisher Description
* Relates personal accounts of life in America's last colony for sufferers of Hansen's disease
* Provides unprecedented insight and history into life at the only leprosarium in the continental United States
* Contains heart-breaking stories of separation, grief, loneliness, but also accounts of sufferers triumphing over the effects of being ostracized
* Offers valuable insights into the lives of a small group of individuals kept outside of normal American society
* Strips the veil from a place with ominous notoriety to all Louisianans
* Humanizes a awesomely misunderstood patient population
Reader Reviews
I have been aware of the Carville facility since I read Betty Martin's "Miracle at Carville" as a child, and was delighted to learn about ten years ago that at that time, she was still living. The book was very respectful of her privacy, not revealing her real name even though she died in 2002. It was a superficial history of the facility and its newsletter, "The Star", which probably did more to promote knowledge about this interesting disease than anything else.
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Carville: Remembering Leprosy In America
Available from Amazon
Price: $22.40
Updated on 8-4-2008.
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