Your point about leprosy in the first trilogy (published in 1977, IIRC) is of course correct, and I didn't intend to critique SRD's use of the metaphor there. By the time of ROTE, however, 20 years have passed in the real world, and yet there's no indication that anyone, including our medical-doctor protagonist, is even aware that medical advances have rendered people's previous obsession with leprosy obsolete. Which, of course, helps explain why we don't have leper colonies anymore.dlbpharmd wrote:Since 1st Chronicles were written in the early 70s, your complaint that leprosy has been curable for "decades" doesn't really hold up. Also, I believe you have to remember that Covenant's world and "our world" aren't the same. Lastly, SRD relied heavily on his father's knowledge base in treating patients with leprosy in India, thus the use of dapsone (DDS) as monotherapy.
What brought the subject to mind was the nasty aside by the sheriff in ROTE, who still hates Covenant because he was a leper and suggests that Roger should just burn down Haven Farm. He says this to Avery, who should know with certainty that leprosy no longer poses a threat of any kind to anyone, but who doesn't even bother to note his ignorance to herself.
I have a longer argument about all this, but as you suggest, it's probably been hashed over before, and this isn't the right thread for it anyway. I'd be interested in seeing what others have written on the subject, though, so any pointers would be welcome.
I'll just note in passing that my issues here could be fanwanked away by playing with the (deliberately ambiguous) real-world timeline or assuming that Covenant's leprosy was caused by a weird, mutant, multidrug-resistant bacterial strain. I think these are cheats, but they're still plausible arguments. Still, the implications of medical progress on the leprosy metaphor are quite interesting, especially should it resurface in future installments of the last chronicles, so I'll look forward to discovering previous discussions on the subject before getting too deep into it myself.