Pam Fessler
Author
Description
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...
Author
Pub. Date
[2020]
Physical Desc
x, 348 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm
Description
"The unknown story of the only leprosy colony in the continental United States, and the thousands of Americans who were exiled--hidden away with their "shameful" disease. Between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, the Mississippi River curls around an old plantation thick with trees, with a stately white manor house at its heart. Locals knew it as Carville--the site of the only leprosarium in the continental United States from 1894 until 1999, where generations...