Leprosy, Racism, And Public Health by Zachary Gussow

Author:Zachary Gussow [Gussow, Zachary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, General
ISBN: 9780813306742
Google: txogAQAAIAAJ
Publisher: Avalon Publishing
Published: 1989-07-16T04:28:38+00:00

P.S.—Please pardon mistakes. I had to write in haste.78

In his letter to Ransdell, Early, the ex-soldier, did not raise the question of federal responsibility in the instance of a service-connected disability. Early's appeal for care was based on moral, Christian considerations. However, the issue of federal responsibility was never far from committee members' thoughts. In an earlier exchange of views between Dr. Frederick L. Hoffman, statistician for The Prudential Insurance Co. of America, California Senator John D. Works, and Ransdell about the legality of government intervention in leprosy cases where interstate quarantine was concerned, the role of the government in providing care for soldiers who developed leprosy subsequent to their discharge from service abroad was also raised. Works supposed "the Government would have no further responsibility . . . than it would have toward any other American citizen." Ransdell, however, thought otherwise. "Perhaps not," he replied, "but the disease was incurred in the performance of the soldier's duty to the Government and to the people, and, since we do not hesitate to pay a substantial pension to the soldiers of the Civil War, there would seem to be no reason why some Government obligation does not exist in the case of these men."79

With the passage in 1917 of a national leprosy bill, it had taken the U.S. Congress approximately twenty-eight years (1889-1917) to digest the idea that a federally sponsored, disease-specific institution for leprosy was warranted. Disease-specific institutions sponsored by the federal government for the general civilian population are uncommon in the United States. In fact, the leprosarium at Carville is the only disease-specific institution for the general civilian population that the U.S. federal government has ever opened. Nothing like this would happen again until 1935, when the federal government opened the U.S. Public Health Service hospital at Lexington, Kentucky, for convicted narcotic addicts.80 In taking steps to open a national leprosarium—a move that was not accompanied by any effort or intent to establish federal institutions for other specific diseases—the U.S. Congress acceded to the view that leprosy was very special indeed.81 In according leprosy an institution of its own, Congress accorded leprosy a very special status, one from which it has never fully recovered.

The opening of a national leprosarium was delayed by World War I and the search for a site. Various locations had been considered, but opposition was strong. The old Louisiana State Home for Lepers already existed and was therefore available. Although officially designated as U.S. Marine Hospital No. 66, the leprosarium at Carville was designed less as a hospital and more as a place of confinement. And although federally sponsored hospitals for specific diseases are uncommon in the United States, federally sponsored places of confinement are not. Historically they have included such establishments as reservations for American Indians, quarantine stations for regulating imports and in-migration, Veterans Administration Hospitals for the mentally ill, a host of penitentiaries for federal offenders, and relocation centers for containing Japanese-Americans during World War II.

With leprosy linked to these categories for which

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