Perhaps, there was not and there is no disease worse than the one that will be discussed. To feel like a rotting corpse, to see how fingers and hands gradually fall off, and your face turns into a bumpy grinning mask - what could be worse? Doctors call this disease leprosy, but it is best known as leprosy
“Trophy” of the Crusaders
In one of his stories, Jack London wrote about the lepers: “Their faces resembled animal faces. One had a hole in the place of the nose. The other had a kultyka hanging from his shoulder - the remnant of a rotted
hand. There were thirty of them, men and women, thirty outcasts, for they had the seal of the beast. Once they were people, but now they were monsters, mutilated and disfigured, as if they had been tortured for centuries in hell - a terrible caricature of a person."
Leprosy has been known since time immemorial. It is already mentioned in the Bible, which describes the case of the healing of ten lepers by Jesus Christ. During excavations in Egypt, archaeologists found bas-reliefs with images of patients with leprosy. The bas-reliefs are three thousand years old …
From the banks of the Nile, a terrible disease came to Greece, and then to other countries of Western Europe. This happened during the Crusades, when crowds of conquerors moved to Palestine. When they returned, they brought with them a sinister disease. So leprosy became the scourge of medieval Europe.
It began with seemingly harmless purple spots on the skin of the hands, face, and forearms. After some time, nodules and nodules appeared on the spot of the spots, which then turned into deep festering ulcers. The patient's face was transformed, becoming like the face of a grinning, angry lion. At the same time, the nervous system of the patient was affected. His body no longer felt pain, even if he was touched with a red-hot iron, while living meat was smoking and burning.
Photo: Engravings "Caring for the Lepers".
Bloody baths
But the worst thing happened when tissue necrosis began, limbs rotted away, and people turned into living dead. Is it any wonder that lepers terrified everyone who came in contact with them?
Leprosy was considered an incurable disease. True, even in the Middle Ages, there was a legend about the miraculous healing of a knight who returned from a crusade in 1197 and fell ill with leprosy. One of the doctors advised him to wash himself with someone else's blood. The girl, who fell in love with the unfortunate knight, agreed to sacrifice herself. But the knight refused to return health at such a terrible cost. And a miracle happened: unknown forces healed him!
In the old days, the attitude towards people with leprosy was harsh, even cruel. They were deprived of all rights, became people outside the law. In Scotland, they were supposed to be sterilized so that they could not have children. People with signs of leprosy were ruthlessly expelled from cities and towns. Later, they began to arrange special shelters, or leper colony. In medieval Europe, there were several thousand such shelters!
The ritual of imprisonment in a leper colony was strange and inhuman. The patient was taken to the temple, laid in a coffin and served the funeral mass. The coffin was taken to the cemetery. A curse was pronounced over the "grave": "You are dead to us!" and the sick person was sent to a shelter.
Outcast caste
From that hour on, man became outcast. Until his last days, he was doomed to live in a leper colony. True, he was sometimes allowed to go out into the city for alms, but at the same time he had to announce from a distance his approach by the ringing of a bell or the sound of a rattle. A special warning sign was sewn onto his clothes - crossed arms.
However, despite all possible precautions, the number of lepers did not decrease. It happened that during popular unrest, people's anger turned to these unfortunates. In 1321, many reservoirs and wells were poisoned in France. Someone started a rumor that poison made by lepers was added to the water. “Inhabitants of cities and villages,” a contemporary told, “rushed to the leper colony to kill the sick, who suddenly became enemies of society. Only pregnant women and mothers were spared, and even then only while they were feeding the babies. The royal courts covered up these massacres, and the nobility even allocated armed people for pogroms."
In Russia, leprosy has been known at least since the 10th century. It came to Kievan Rus from Greece, to the Volga and the Urals - from South-West Asia, to Siberia and the Far East - from China (not without reason it was sometimes called the "Chinese disease"). The general spread of leprosy in Russia began in the middle of the 15th century.
The fate of lepers in Russia was also dire. Russian scientist-ethnographer P. E. Kulakov talked about "foreigners" (Buryats) who were sick with leprosy. They settled in remote places and, on pain of reprisals, had no right to leave them.
Experiments on yourself
“I saw death, suicide,” wrote Kulakov, “close people were dying in my arms. All this is hard and scary. But the living dead, a person deprived of affection, an affable word, often even food and warmth, and deprived just when he most needs human participation - this is worse and more terrible than any death and any suffering."
Doctors have long argued about how leprosy is transmitted - hereditary or infectious. It is interesting that this disease is purely human. Neither animals nor birds get sick with leprosy. Therefore, the courage of doctors who tried to study leprosy for themselves is admirable.
The first of these was the Norwegian doctor Daniel Cornelius Danielssen. In the mid-19th century, leprosy was common in Norway. Got sick with it
whole families. Danielssen insisted on the opening of the first leper colony in the city of Bergen and became its chief physician.
For 15 years, he conducted the most dangerous experiments on himself. The courageous explorer removed particles from the nodules of lepers and inoculated them into himself, as inoculating smallpox. He also injected himself with the blood of the sick. And although he did it many times, he did not get leprosy.
Then Danielssen cut out a piece of the nodule from the diseased and transplanted it into his incision, under the skin. And again, the disease was not transmitted. The fearless Norwegian doctor lived after that for another half century and died in 1894 as an 80-year-old man in his native Bergen. By this time, the causative agent of leprosy had already been identified. The glory of its discovery belongs to another Norwegian doctor - Gerhard Hansen.
The "kingdom" of leprosy
Examining samples from an incision in the leper's skin through a microscope, Hansen saw bundles of sticks - straight and slightly curved, with rounded tips. They looked like cigarettes folded in packs. These were the bacilli - the causative agents of leprosy.
Meanwhile, the most dangerous experiments on oneself continued. The Italian doctor, a specialist in skin diseases, Giu-zeppe Prophet, inoculated himself with material that clearly contained the bacillus of leprosy. And again a miracle happened: the terrible disease did not stick!
Later it turned out that leprosy is transmitted from person to person, but, fortunately, not always. Moreover, it turns out that it is possible to separate really infectious patients from those who are not dangerous, the so-called "quiet". Statistics show that from prolonged contact with infectious lepers usually no more than 10 - 12 percent of healthy people get sick.
There are now over 10 million lepers all over the world. Africa remains the "kingdom" of leprosy. Every tenth Congolese is disfigured by leprosy. There are many lepers in Gabon, Kenya, Cameroon, Tanzania.
Doctors say that leprosy is curable nowadays. There are already drugs that can slow down its development. But the path to getting rid of torment is long and difficult. Once upon a time it was said that leprosy is the Lord's punishment. It is significant that mother's milk contains substances that protect the still sinless child from the disease with a terrible disease. So, perhaps, leprosy is really a punishment for our sins, for the godless deeds, which humanity has innumerable?
Gennady CHERNENKO
"Secrets of the XX century" № 44
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