Leprosy, shrouded in a fog of legends and fears, has acquired a lot of names - the Phoenician disease, Crimea, the disease of St. Lazarus. It is known from the ancient Egyptian papyri that leprosy appeared more than once in Egypt. Even the doctors of Pharaoh Merneptah, the son of Ramses II, were the first to express thoughts about the isolation of lepers.
The Phoenicians, having contracted leprosy from the ancient Egyptians, spread it throughout Europe, giving the disease its name. The disease did not spare anyone - kings, warriors, priests - no one could escape this sad fate. Known to the world since biblical times under the name leprosy, the disease quietly and tirelessly found its victims in the spaces of medieval Europe.
Living dead
The history of leprosy begins in ancient times. In the Old Testament, it was recommended to destroy the homes of lepers, and burn their clothes and personal items. It was mentioned by Hippocrates and the ancient Indians, whose laws - Manu (rules of conduct for the population of Ancient India) forbade leprosy patients, as well as the sons and daughters of lepers, from marrying healthy people. But the very first scientific description of this disease was provided by the famous Roman physician Claudius Galen, who lived in the 2nd century AD. He correctly pointed out the main signs of leprosy, such as a "lion's face", the falling off of dead tissue from the body and limbs, thickening of the auricles. But he was also powerless to determine the causative agent of the disease.
The real reason for the outbreaks of leprosy in the XII-XIV centuries was the terrible unsanitary conditions that flourished then in Europe. If you know and the kings considered the mud sacred and did not wash for a long time, then what to say about the commoners. The infection simply mowed down the population. Lepers turned into outcasts, they were cursed by the church, forbidding them to visit temples and be in public places.
In sermons, the churchmen explained that leprosy is God's punishment for especially terrible sins, and lepers should be excommunicated from serving God, isolated and tried to "cleanse" from filth. Throughout the Middle Ages, "rules" were drawn up for the behavior of a leper and his relatives, like this: "As soon as a disease was discovered, a person was taken to a religious tribunal, which … condemned him to death." The unfortunate man was taken (including by force) to the church, where everything was prepared for burial.
They put the patient in a coffin, served a funeral service, carried him to the cemetery, lowered him into the grave, throwing several shovels of earth on him with the words: "You are not alive, you are dead for all of us." Then the unfortunate man was dragged out of the grave and sent to a leper colony. Forever and ever. He never returned home to his family again. He was dead to everyone. If the patient left the hospital for a while, he had to wear clothes with a hood made of gray or black cloth, on which there was a special sign of crossed arms. The sufferer was forced to wear a special hat with a white ribbon or bell, but not so that the healthy, seeing or hearing him, scatter in fear, but so that someone would give the unfortunate alms - many sick people lost their voice and could not ask for alms.
Promotional video:
Iron men
The trouble was not spared and the crusaders chained in iron: on the territory of the conquered Palestine, many lepers appeared, who were treated in a leper colony outside the walls of Jerusalem. The knights returning from the campaigns did not know that they were infected, and only over time did the disease disfigure the bodies of the sick - the person became covered with spots, scaly growths, turning into a rotting invalid alive, ceasing to feel even the most acute pain. The unfortunate warriors did not know that the incubation period of the terrible disease lasts from 2 to 20 years. The sufferers were forced to live out their sad days, being in complete isolation of the leper colony.
It was then that the curious story of the order of the leper knights began, which instilled fear in the enemy with their very appearance. The beginning of the second millennium was the time when the crusaders in Palestine founded one of the most unusual military orders in the history of such organizations. At first it was the most common hospital for lepers in Jerusalem, among whom there were many knights. The monks there helped the unfortunate. In 1098, many infected knights united in the Military and Hospitaller Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem. Although the order was not recognized by the Holy See in Rome until 1255, the Lazarite knights had strong patrons. The nobility was well acquainted with leprosy, which raged in Europe and the Middle East, and understood that one day one of them might need the care and knowledge of the monks of the order. The infection did not distinguish a poor man from a noble nobleman, and no one was immune from the creeping rot of leprosy, which struck even one of Jerusalem's rulers, King Baldwin IV the Leper.
Therefore, the European kings and favored the sick, but not broken knights. The order gradually gained strength not only in the Holy Land, but also in Europe. Most of the time lazarites spent caring for the sick. But after the capture of Jerusalem by Salah ad-Din in 1187, the knights of the order decided to participate in hostilities and repeatedly fought. And during the Third Crusade, a detachment of leper warriors, rushing into battle with open visors, brought incredible terror to the Saracens, who were afraid of contracting this incomprehensible disease. However, in the battle of Forbia in 1244, all the knights of the order, along with their master, died.
Medieval Aesculapius
The fear of leprosy was so great that in order to isolate the sick, from the 6th century in France, they began to create special shelters - leper colony, usually on the outskirts of the city or in deserted places. So lepers were doomed, practically without treatment, to a slow and certain death. The first leper colony has been known in Western Europe since 570. During the period of the Crusades, their number increased sharply. At the beginning of the 13th century, there were already several thousand such shelters in Europe. They had common chambers, chapels and even cemeteries. Infectious patients were buried in deep and carefully dug graves. Special gravestones were installed on them. Only after much more devastating epidemics of the plague of lepers did they stop avoiding, but this had little effect on the situation as a whole.
They treated leprosy as best they could. More precisely, as they did not know how. Therefore, it is not surprising that the then known means did not help. Diet and stomach cleansing, viper tincture, and even spiderweb tangles taken on an empty stomach were believed by doctors at the time to be the main treatments for this disease. They even tried to heal with drugs with solutions of gold, bloodletting or baths with the blood of giant turtles.
Only the wave of the medieval Black Death - the plague could turn the tide. The number of patients with leprosy began to decline sharply - lepers with weak immunity died much more often than healthy people, so after each outbreak of the plague, the leper colony simply emptied.
Harmful "stick"
Everything was changed by the epoch-making discovery of the Norwegian scientist Gerhard Hansen, who in 1873 managed to isolate the causative agent of the disease - the rod-shaped mycobacterium Mycobacterium leprae, close to tuberculosis, called "Hansen's bacillus". Mycobacterium is unable to reproduce in some nutrient media and often does not manifest itself for many years. Therefore, the infected people did not know about their fatal disease. And in 1943, American researcher Guy Henry Faget discovered an effective remedy for the treatment of leprosy - sulfone drugs that effectively cure the disease in a few years.
Over time, scientists have found that the causative agent of the disease reproduces best in the body of not the most numerous tropical animal - the armadillo. It has long been believed that leprosy is a disease inherent only in humans. However, today it is known that the pathogen can be spread with the help of these animals. It is estimated that one in five armadillos in the wild is a carrier of leprosy. In the southern United States, armadillos have been harvested for years for their tender meat. You can actually get leprosy this way. Its symptoms are poorly diagnosed, because leprosy is a rare disease in the region. Now, with the help of armadillos, researchers have been able to better understand the disease. Today, with timely diagnosis, leprosy is completely curable.
Mikhail ANDREEV