Leper colony

thumb|right|[[Spinalonga on Crete, Greece, one of the last leprosy colonies in Europe, closed in 1957]]

A leper colony, also known by many other names, is an isolated community for the quarantining and treatment of lepers, people suffering from leprosy.

M. leprae, the bacterium responsible for leprosy, is believed to have spread from East Africa through the Near East, Europe, and Asia by the 5th century before reaching the rest of the world more recently. Historically, leprosy was believed to be extremely contagious and divinely ordained, leading to enormous stigma against its sufferers. Other severe skin diseases were frequently conflated with leprosy and all such sufferers were kept away from the general public, although some religious orders provided medical care and treatment. Recent research has shown M. leprae has maintained a similarly virulent genome over at least the last thousand years, leaving it unclear which precise factors led to leprosy's near elimination in Europe by 1700. A growing number of cases following the first wave of European colonization, however, led to increased attention towards leprosy during the New Imperialism of the late 19th century. Following G. A. Hansen's discovery of the role of M. leprae in the disease, the First International Leprosy Conference held in Berlin in 1897 renewed interest and investment in the isolation of lepers throughout the European colonial empires.

The development of modern treatments eliminated the need to isolate lepers as early as the 1940s; scientific arguments against the practice were made in the 1980s. Although Western countries now generally treat cases of leprosy individually on an outpatient basis, traditional isolated colonies continue to exist in India, China, Japan and some other countries.

Names

In medieval Latin, a place for the isolation and care of lepers was known as a leprosaria, leprosarium, or leprosorium, names which are sometimes used in English as well. The Latin was calqued in English as , Other names derive from the figure of Lazarus in one of Jesus's parables, treated by the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages as a historical figure and as the patron saint of both lepers and the Crusader Order of Saint Lazarus, who administered the leper colony in Jerusalem before spreading to other locations. This caused leper colonies to also be known as and, after the leper colony and quarantine center Lazzaretto Vecchio on the Republic of Venice's tiny island of Sta. Maria di Nazaret in the Venetian Lagoon, as lazarets, lazarettes, lazarettos, and lazarettas. The name leper or is sometimes used for colonies in China, a calque of the Mandarin name máfēngcūn

History

thumb|[[Culion leper colony in Culion old town in Palawan, Philippines used to shelter one of the largest populations of lepers in Asia, numbering between 3,500–4,000.]]

thumb|[[Taddiport in North Devon, England, formerly a medieval leper colony]]

thumb|Abandoned [[nun's quarters at the leper colony on Chacachacare Island in Trinidad and Tobago]]

Although not all of the skin diseases (kushtha) discussed in the Indian Vedas and the Manusmriti were leprosy, some of them seem to have been, with the disease appearing in the subcontinent by at least 2000BCE. The Indian religious texts and laws did not organize formal leper colonies but treated those afflicted with the disease as untouchable outcastes, forbidding and punishing any marriage with them while they suffered from the disease, which was considered both contagious and a divine retribution for sins of the sufferer's current or former life. In legend, even kings were removed from power and left to wander in the forests while suffering from leprosy, although their position could be restored in the event of their recovery, whether through divine intervention or Ayurvedic herbal remedies such as chaulmoogra oil.

Similarly, the Persians and Israelites considered certain skin diseases to render people unclean and unfit for society, without organizing any special locations for their care; it seems likely, however, that the references to leprosy in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament are the result of a misunderstanding produced by the Septuagints Koine Greek translation and subsequent Latin translations like the Vulgate and originally referred to a variety of conditions such as psoriasis before becoming associated with leprosy centuries later. This confusion of termsand the related divine opprobriumwas then translated into medicine in the medieval Islamic world in the 9th century. The introduction of leprosy to Southern Europe was blamed on the armies of Alexander the Great and Pompey the Great; ancient Greek and Roman physicians did not blame divine punishment and advocated various treatments but still usually advised that lepers be kept out of cities. The area of modern Belgium alone may have had as many as 700 or 800 prior to the Crusades. Some leper colonies issued their own money or tokens, in the belief that allowing people affected by leprosy to handle regular money could spread the disease. Today, leper hospitals exist throughout the world to treat those afflicted with leprosy, especially in Africa, Brazil, China and India. In 2002, a formal inquiry into these colonies was set up, and in March 2005, the policy was strongly denounced. "Japan's policy of absolute quarantine... did not have any scientific grounds." The inquiry denounced not only the government and the doctors who were involved with the policy, but also the court that repeatedly ruled in favor of the government when the policy was challenged, as well as the media, which failed to report the plight of the victims.

Names

History

See also

References