BookShared
  • MEMBER AREA    
  • Carville's Cure: Leprosy, Stigma, and the Fight for Justice

    (By Pam Fessler)

    Book Cover Watermark PDF Icon Read Ebook
    ×
    Size 27 MB (27,086 KB)
    Format PDF
    Downloaded 668 times
    Last checked 14 Hour ago!
    Author Pam Fessler
    “Book Descriptions: The Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans curls around an old sugar plantation that long housed one of America’s most painful secrets. Locals knew it as Carville, the site of the only leprosy colony in the continental United States, where generations of afflicted Americans were isolated—often against their will and until their deaths.


    Following the trail of an unexpected family connection, acclaimed journalist Pam Fessler has unearthed the lost world of the patients, nurses, doctors, and researchers at Carville who struggled for over a century to eradicate Hansen’s disease, the modern name for leprosy. Amid widespread public anxiety about foreign contamination and contagion, patients were deprived of basic rights—denied the right to vote, restricted from leaving Carville, and often forbidden from contact with their own parents or children. Neighbors fretted over their presence and newspapers warned of their dangerous condition, which was seen as a biblical “curse” rather than a medical diagnosis.


    Though shunned by their fellow Americans, patients surprisingly made Carville more a refuge than a prison. Many carved out meaningful lives, building a vibrant community and finding solace, brotherhood, and even love behind the barbed-wire fence that surrounded them. Among the memorable figures we meet in Fessler’s masterful narrative are John Early, a pioneering crusader for patients’ rights, and the unlucky Landry siblings—all five of whom eventually called Carville home—as well as a butcher from New York, a 19-year-old debutante from New Orleans, and a pharmacist from Texas who became the voice of Carville around the world. Though Jim Crow reigned in the South and racial animus prevailed elsewhere, Carville took in people of all faiths, colors, and backgrounds. Aided by their heroic caretakers, patients rallied to find a cure for Hansen’s disease and to fight the insidious stigma that surrounded it.


    Weaving together a wealth of archival material with original interviews as well as firsthand accounts from her own family, Fessler has created an enthralling account of a lost American history. In our new age of infectious disease, Carville’s Cure demonstrates the necessity of combating misinformation and stigma if we hope to control the spread of illness without demonizing victims and needlessly destroying lives.”

    Google Drive Logo DRIVE
    Book 1

    The Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis

    ★★★★★

    Maria Smilios

    Book 1

    The Second Life of Mirielle West

    ★★★★★

    Amanda Skenandore

    Book 1

    Divided Minds: Twin Sisters and Their Journey Through Schizophrenia

    ★★★★★

    Pamela Spiro Wagner

    Book 1

    A Council of Dolls

    ★★★★★

    Mona Susan Power

    Book 1

    Kill Shot: A Shadow Industry, a Deadly Disease

    ★★★★★

    Jason Dearen

    Book 1

    The Disease: One Man's Journey Through a Life with Leprosy

    ★★★★★

    Anne Harmon Brett

    Book 1

    The Witchstone

    ★★★★★

    Henry H. Neff

    Book 1

    Hi Honey, I'm Homo!: Sitcoms, Specials, and the Queering of American Culture

    ★★★★★

    Matt Baume

    Book 1

    Lost in the Wild: Danger and Survival in the North Woods

    ★★★★★

    Cary J. Griffith

    Book 1

    The Dalai Lama's Cat and the Power of Meow (The Dalai Lama's Cat, #3)

    ★★★★★

    David Michie

    Book 1

    Indianapolis: The True Story of the Worst Sea Disaster in U.S. Naval History and the Fifty-Year Fight to Exonerate an Innocent Man

    ★★★★★

    Lynn Vincent

    Book 1

    Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town

    ★★★★★

    Barbara Demick

    Book 1

    The Art of Purring (The Dalai Lama's Cat, #2)

    ★★★★★

    David Michie

    Book 1

    The Girl in the Green Sweater: A Life in Holocaust's Shadow

    ★★★★★

    Krystyna Chiger