Word: lazzaretto
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...until 1949 was his leprosy diagnosed. Then the police, rigidly following Italy's medievally strict leprosy laws, threw him into Rome's Lazzaretto Lazaro Spallanzani.* Though he was repeatedly certified "noncontagious and innocuous," it took Orano months to get away to France with his wife Giulia, a former nurse. But after six years of campaigning against the "vilest humiliations" and "unreasoning, medieval terror of leprosy," Orano was finally locked up by the French. So back he went to Rome...
Decay & Disorder. In a flurry of understanding, Rome gave Orano a hero's welcome, with gifts of a TV set. books and money, and promises of special consideration in the Lazzaretto Spallanzani. (Despite intensive treatment in France with sulfone drugs, the once powerful Orano was by this time gnarled and weakened, his handsome face disfigured, his blue eyes clouded.) But the promises were soon forgotten. Roman bureaucrats enforced the letter of antiquated Italian law. They let the faithful Giulia live with him in an isolated cottage (he is the only leprosy victim in Spallanzani), forced her to take full...
...Lazzaretto, from Lazarus, an isolation hospital; named for Microbe Hunter Lazaro Spallanzani...
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