Leprosy Facts

Born on October 4, 1716 in Scotland, James Lind was an english physician. Through many experiments in his clinical trial, Lind was able to prove that citrus fruits could prevent scurvy, which was a disease that was caused by the deficiency of vitamin C. Lind changed the face of history because he showed the medical world that there was a cure for a disease (one less disease to worry about).Born on October 4, 1716 in Scotland, James Lind was an english physician. Through many experiments in his clinical trial, Lind was able to prove that citrus fruits could prevent scurvy, which was a disease that was caused by the deficiency of vitamin C. Lind changed the face of history because he showed the medical world that there was a cure for a disease

Anthropology is a word derived from the Greek words anthropos and logia. The word anthropos means human, and the word logia, in basic terms, means the study of. Therefore an anthropologist is a person who studies humans. Anthropologists study humans to gain and spread knowledge for the greater good of humanity, so we as a people can understand one another. To study anthropology as an anthropologist involves extensive research. Furthermore, to gather any credible research a person must follow a set guideline, especially when using and gathering research from another person. This guideline is in place to protect one's personal freedom because many cases involving human research have been unethical, unmoral, and unjust.

Before the discovery of Penicillin, Syphilis (as well as other STDs) was a major problem in the world. There was no prevention from the diseases, no way at all to care for the problem, and no medicine to help the patient. Edgar Allen Poe lived during a time where Syphilis was rampant, could this have lead him to write a story based around the disease? Most scholars have come to an agreement that “The Masque of the Red Death” is based around a plague (maybe the Bubonic Plague) and that the rooms inside Prospero’s castle represent the decades or ages of man that Shakespeare described in his “Seven Ages of Man.” While that is a sufficient analysis of the story for those not willing to look deeper, there may be an underlying meaning.

Upon entering this course I knew very little about leprosy except for the fact that it was a skin disease that resulted in painful sores. Whilst reading Walking Corpses: Leprosy in Byzantium and the Medieval West I was intrigued by the disease and how it affected not only the individuals who had contracted it, but the population as a whole. Before reading this book, it was unknown to me that there were two forms of this disease. I found it interesting that people have a natural immunity to leprosy. An individual’s level of immunity determined whether or not they would contract the disease and how severe it would manifest.

Everyone has that one feature they want to change in him or her. Some let that flaw get in the way of what they think of themselves and make them feel insecure of what other people think of them. Throughout the course of The Samurai’s Garden, Gail Tsukiyama uses Sachi’s experiences with having to deal with leprosy and how she wasn’t beautiful anymore to illustrate the idea that inner beauty is more important than outer beauty. Sachi went through the horrors of experiencing leprosy. One feature that Sachi had was outer beauty and most girls from Tarumi didn’t have as much as she did.

Hawaii was a treasure, a gem glittering with potential; it was a “white man’s paradise” (Okihiro 63). After its discovery by Captain Cook, Hawaii quickly became a destination for missionaries and traders, ready to exploit both the islands’ people and resources. As more Americans flocked to the islands, word spread about its exotic natives, beauty, and uniqueness. This soon attracted a new wave of travelers: tourists. Although Jack London fervently denied being a newcomer and insisted that he was a kamaaiana, “one who belongs,” he was one of the first to catch this “Hawaiian fever.” His collection of short stories, The House of Pride and Other Tales of Hawaii, enticed many other Americans to travel to Hawaii. In this collection, London focuses primarily on the leprosy affecting the natives and “being one” with them. On a superficial level, it appears that London is against Manifest Destiny and the white man’s encroachment of the Hawaiian Islands; however, a closer reading reveals the opposite. Jack London’s writings display the classic mentality that Hawaii belonged to America for the purpose of being a destination for adventure and the restoration of the

His first discovery was made at the University of Chicago in 1944. He discovered that chlamydia was a bacterial infection, instead of a virus as previously thought (Ross, Christian H.). Thus, changing how people treated and understood the sexually transmitted disease. Another ground breaking discovery was the SV40 and the adenoviruses. Hilleman was also the first to purify interferon and show it was induced by double stranded RNA (Kresge, Kristen J.).

Since the late nineteenth century, syphilis, one of the several venereal diseases, has caused numerous conflicts and controversies in American history. Syphilis has been involved in various agents of socialization such as class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and family. This paper primarily discusses the social history of syphilis from the nineteenth century to modern times. Syphilis is caused by a motile, coiled spirochaete bacterium, called Treponema pallidum, which results in approximately ten million people infection worldwide annually.1 This sexually transmitted disease is characterized by four stages: primary, secondary, latency, and tertiary.

According to the data recorded in The Journal of Medical Microbiology, “a strain of Mycobacterium Leprae (M.leprae), the bacteria that causes leprosy, in ancient DNA extracted from a female skull discovered in Suffolk”. Hoxne, Suffolk was in East Anglia where leprosy was believed to be spread through medieval England. While typically passed from armadillo to human, then from human to human, this time, the disease was thought to be spread via squirrel fur in trade with the Scandinavian Anglo-Saxon movement (The Information Company). By using radiocarbon dating, researchers were able to identify the leprosy disease in the skull of a woman who

Lyme disease was unknown to people in the early 1970s and may still be unknown if not for two mothers in Lyme, Connecticut. The mothers both noticed their kids and others in their town had the same symptoms and started trying to figure out what was wrong. The medical field began studying the groups symptoms to try and find a cause. By the mid 1970’s the new disease was called Lyme but no one knew what was causing it. In 1981 scientist Willy Burgdorfer who studied Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever started to study Lyme disease. He found the cause of the disease in a deer tick. He had discovered a bacterium called a spirochete. In 1982 the medical field named the spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi in honor of his discovery.

Within a fourteen-year period, two studies in different parts of the world emerged that hoped to study the disease of syphilis. Here in the United States, Tuskegee, Alabama emerged as the starting point of one of these studies, in which Public Health Services’ physicians and officers studied the deadly effects of Syphilis on African American Males. When penicillin emerged in 1943 as the main treatment, this study denied their African American test subjects the opportunity to be treated, but rather continued their study, hoping to advance the current knowledge on the effects that syphilis has on a person if it goes untreated. Farther south, within the country of Guatemala, Public Health Services hoped again to study syphilis, but with a different focus. Rather than study the effects of untreated syphilis, Public Health Services worked to study various other chemicals that could be used to prevent and contain the spread syphilis, in addition studying certain doses of penicillin and their ability to treat the disease. To do this, Public Health officials and physicians purposefully infected various prisoners, people in mental hospitals, soldiers, and prostitutes. When looking at both of these studies, various ethical issues and dilemmas are present. By using two popular ethical schools of thought: utilitarianism and Kantianism, the ethical justification or justification of these studies will be explored. When discussing both the Guatemala and Tuskegee Syphilis studies,

Ehrlich is responsible for the first man made antibiotic that was able to treat one a STD (Bosch and Rosich, 2008). Through the process of creating a treatment for syphilis, it wasn’t until the 606th compound showed possibility of being a positive asset in treating syphilis (Bosch and Rosich, 2008). Although, the 606th compound known as Salvarsan was first tried in 1907 and provided a negative result in treating syphilis (Bosch and Rosich, 2008). Allowing the antibiotic of Salvarsan to sit Ehrlich attempted to reassess it on the STD of syphilis in the year of 1909 (Bosch and Rosich, 2008). It was the reassessment of the Salvarsan that provided a positive result of chemotherapy in providing treatment for syphilis (Bosch and Rosich, 2008). As many creating an antibiotics Ehrlich used rabbits to test the antibiotics on before exposing humans that are diagnosed with syphilis.

In 1878, Ehrlich was offered the position head physician at Charite Hospital in Berlin. Here he developed a new technique of straining cells to identify tuberculosis. He also identified the many types of blood cells of the body and practically laid out the foundation of hematology. Also, as he was developing a new method for the strain of live tissue, he discovered what the use of methylene blue was on the treatment of nervous disorders. After experiencing tuberculosis, he transferred to a different hospital where he focused on the problem of immunity. The hypothesis Ehrlich developed explained how antibodies are formed and how they react with other substances. Ehrlich later decided to study syphilis, and tried to form a cure for it. Ehrlich performed 606 experiments before he finally found a successful weapon to use against the

What is your favorite disease? Mine is Leprosy. To some that might seem like an odd question, but to me, its more interesting then whoever is on the front cover of magazines. It started with art. I have been drawing the human body since I can remember. My room was littered with papers of my sketches of the human body, skulls, and bones in various mammals. I found myself spending days reading about plagues, and staring at DaVinci’s articulate way of drawing the human body. It amazed me how resilient the human race is and how we continue to evolve. Biology has always been another art to me, and continues to challenge me in ways to fully understand the word as we call it, life.

The earliest record of leprosy existing is back in 1550 B.C. There, it was discovered that the Egyptians had described the indicators of this pathogenic bacterial disease. From then on, Indians, Greeks, and Romans had dealt with the disfigurement, muscle weakness, and neuralgia. As the disease multiplied inside of its hosts, so did humanity’s struggle to accept and cure the disabled whom were affected. In 1873, a Norwegian doctor named Dr. Gerhard Hansen uncovered Mycobacterium leprae, the leprosy pathogen. Afterwards, doctors start using an oil extracted from a Chaulmoogra nut plant as a treatment. They injected the oil into the person affected. Although it seemed to work, the injections near affected areas were painful for the treated persons,