Unclean! Unclean! Even though we know better, just the mention of leprosy can make our skin crawl. After reading Carville: Remembering Leprosy in America, I know a lot more about Hansen’s Disease (the proper name for leprosy) and its psychological and cultural as well as physical effects on people, both for those with Hansen’s Disease and those around them. Gaudet’s work relates how one group of Hansen’s Disease patients overcomes public quarantine and humiliation to create a society of their own rich in tradition, culture, and history.
For over 100 years Carville, Louisiana, was home to the only in-patient hospital for the disease in the continental United States. During that time hundreds of patients entered the medical campus and many stayed for the rest of their lives. Gaudet ably provides the reader with a history of the hospital, as well as a laymen’s explanation of Hansen’s Disease. Most people are more familiar with the colony for Hansen’s Disease patients on the island of Molokai in Hawaii and the story of Father Damien, the priest who contracted Hansen’s Disease while caring for the patients (although it is not wholly contagious). The website leprosy.org states that Hansen’s Disease can be contracted through long term contact with someone who has not been treated, but that 95% of the world’s population has a natural immunity.
Hansen’s Disease has a folklore of its own dating from the mention of leprosy in the book of Leviticus, although that reference refers to all types of skin disease and not this more modern manifestation. “Leprosy not only stigmatizes, it transformed basic identity. Unlike any other illness, this disease branded its victims with its name. One became a ‘leper’ with all the judgement-laden associations from the bible, from literature, and from popular culture” (24).
The narratives of separation from society that Gaudet presents are vivid and heart-rending. Until Hansen’s Disease was better understood in the late 1960s, most people diagnosed with the disease were forced by law into quarantine at Carville, to change their names, and to forsake their families. Many were buried in the hospital’s cemetery under their assumed names, without ever reconnecting with their family and friends. The patients were forced to create new identities and relationships.
But the story of Carville isn’t all tears and isolation. Patients met, fell in love, and married. The patients at Carville created their own culture, rich in traditions that included Mardi Gras celebrations and legends of their own. They even had a literal hole in the fence through which many would escape, even if temporarily, into the real world. Tales of both successful and unsuccessful escapes from Carville became a tale cycle all their own.
Gaudet set out to paint a portrait of the life and culture created by the patients at the G.W. Long Hansen’s Disease Center at Carville, and she succeeded. Due to the bounded lifespan of the group, she was able to trace the origins of the folklore and folklife created by the patients through its entire lifespan. She goes even further to focus on postmemory, the memories of the generations once or twice removed from the situation. First defined by Marianne Hersch in her discussion of the post-Holocaust generations, Gaudet applies the concept to the descendants of patients from the hospital at Carville. What makes it interesting is that some of the children remember their parents being taken away and quarantined. It is their memories of these events in their lives that round out the book.
Carville: Remembering Leprosy in America is an excellent text for folklore classes. It is easily accessible to both undergraduate and graduate students. The writing is engaging and the presentation of the life of a culture from beginning to end is a valuable study in the construction of culture.
--------
[Review length: 627 words • Review posted on October 17, 2006]