Leprosy

Abstract

No physician should be surprised if the next patient he or she sees has leprosy—it has been found in every country in the world. Variously described as starting in China or India, it is reputed to have been carried to the Middle East and Europe by troops returning from the campaigns of Alexander the Great. The relative lack of medical sophistication in the first half of the Christian era resulted in leprosy being called by many names, and similarly many diseases were called leprosy. Clarification of this confusion has become possible because the bone changes associated with severe untreated disease are now easily recognizable, and studies in cemeteries, catacombs, and other burial places have made it possible to detect whether or not leprosy existed in a certain area at a certain time. Despite the original diagnostic uncertainty, which probably caused the incarceration of many patients who did not actually have the disease, it is now known, for example, that many people buried in the Aebelholt monastery in Denmark between 1175 and 1544 were definitely infected.