Kevin's Watch

dlbpharmd wrote:Thanks for the link. I was under the impression that leprosy is curable now, but apparently not so in India.

in an excerpt from [i]What Life was Like for a Medieval Leper[/i] was wrote:What history gets wrong

Due to the unsightly nature of the lesions that leprosy can cause, history tells us that lepers were treated as social outcasts. But Sk27 tells a story of acceptance. He was buried with the rest of the cemetery population rather than separately.

"The presence of a pilgrim burial in the cemetery of a leprosy hospital also challenges modern misconceptions regarding leprosy sufferers as outcasts and that the disease was linked to sinfulness," Roffey said.

The idea of sinfulness, and the misconception that leprosy was highly contagious, was largely influenced by Victorian medical historians with a segregationist agenda when regarding other colonies, Roffey said. The idea of contagion wasn't formed until the 14th century, when leprosy was receding. When Sk27 was alive, leprosy was regarded by some to represent Christ-like suffering before death, providing them with a passport to paradise.

"Our archaeological evidence supports this and indicates that far from being excluded as outcasts, they were treated very much like the religious," Roffey said. "The wider implications of our research ultimately is that it can help challenge long-held and false notions." [link]