Word: leprosariums
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...famous leprosarium is dying of success...
...decree this summer citing "the heroic virtues" of Father Damien, the first step on the road toward sainthood for the Belgian-born missionary. Famed for his devotion to victims of leprosy in Hawaii, Father Damien followed a calling that led to his death from the disease. Now the leprosarium that he made famous, Kalaupapa, is dying of attrition-and for the most welcome reasons: new cases of the disease have become rare among ethnic Hawaiians and part-Hawaiians, and leprosy can be treated so successfully today that newly identified patients soon become noncontagious. The savage isolationism of the past...
...disease can have an incubation period of ten or more years and the priest might have been previously exposed to contagious patients. Other than Damien, no one serving leprosy patients at Kalaupapa has ever developed a confirmed case of the disease. Neither has anyone at the other principal US leprosarium at Carville...
Early experience as a victim has moved some medical saints to serve others. As a girl, Yaeko Ibuka was sent to a leprosarium near Mount Fuji. There she became a Catholic and resigned herself to disfigurement and death, only to be told that she did not have leprosy after all. Though free to return home, she says, she "understood for the first time the power of God's love," and stayed. Now, 55 years later, Yaeko Ibuka is known as "the angel of Fukusei Byoin." At 78, she continues to offer her gentle, unstinting care to the lepers...