Leprosy

Dear Editor,

While waiting in the doctor's office in Denver back in the 1960s, I saw a woman rushed into an examining room.

I heard the nurse say to the person at the desk, "She has Hansen's disease." Later I looked up Hansen's disease in a medical encyclopedia. Hansen's disease is leprosy.

G. Armauer Hansen, a Norwegian physician, discovered the sausage shaped bacillus bacteria that caused it in 1874.

Since Bible times leprosy has been a feared disease. In Matthew 8:2-4, Jesus cured leprosy. Sometimes other diseases were also referred to as leprosy. Fungous and molds were also classified as being leprous or leprosy.

In order to be infected by the bacillus responsible for leprosy, a person has to have a weakened immune system. Children are more likely to get leprosy than adults. The bacteria causing it escapes from skin sores and the nose of an infected person.

A leper colony existed on the island of Oahu in Hawaii for many years. Persons from China spread this disease throughout the Pacific Islands in the 1800s.

About 85 percent of the cases of it in modern times are found in India, China, Indonesia, Japan and Nigeria. Roman soldiers carried the disease to Greece. It has almost disappeared in Canada. Some cases of it were in Norway.

Di-amine-diphenyl sulfone controls it. In the U. S. it is found in Louisiana, Texas, Florida and California and is monitored.

Helen Ruth Arnold

Trenton, Nebraska