Lepers: A Reflection

Before proceeding, please note this quote of a leper:
"This disease takes away the beauty of your face. It eats up your hands and feet and makes us ugly. Other diseases eat up your insides, but they leave you looking beautiful outside."
Leprosy is caused by a germ called Myco-Bacterium Leprea, it was not scientifically identified until 1874, and the cause for the disease was not proven until the 1960s.
This bacteria spreads through Air only when the infectious patients sneezing or coughing.
Now we are having Multi Drug Therapy to cure the Victims in the early stage within six months of symptoms known.
The general characteristics of the disease include, but are not limited to:
--loss of sensation at the nerve ends
--destroyed blood vessels, ligaments and skin tissues
--eroded bones
--sores
--ulcers
--scabs
Since antiquity, leprosy has struck fear into human beings.
Seen as contagious, mutilating and incurable, leprosy continues to alienate those who contract it from their families and communities.
Earlier, the issue of a person's wealth was important when they became known as a leper.
Rich lepers were treated very differently than poor ones. The stories of Alice the Leper and Baldwin IV show that if people were leprous but rich, they were depicted as heroes. Alice was shown as a martyr, and Baldwin still ruled his kingdom in his leprous state. It was not their fault that they were lepers, whereas it was thought that most people contracted leprosy as a punishment from God for their sins. Lepers that were poor had to carry begging bowls. Societies considered them burdens because they could not work. The poor leper seems to have been relegated to the margins.
Lepers were made to wear distinctive clothing.
Leprous people were forced to live outside the city or in a separated area.
They were considered unclean and sinful.
They were a class of people who were condemned by their difference to suffering isolation and derision.
They were considered outcasts, and they kept to themselves.
In truth, leprosy is not very contagious. Only 5 percent of the spouses of those infected ever contract the disease themselves. However, since the untreated effects are very disfiguring, the fear of catching the disease colors our perception of the true risk. Leprosariums for quarantine of patients existed in many countries into the 20th century.
When leprosy declined in modern times, it was replaced by other social afflictions. Whether disease, religious belief, mental condition, unusual sexuality, physical abnormality, or political ideology, small minority groups continue to be isolated and quarantined.
Even more revealing of the power of social ostracism is how common it is for such people to choose some measure of quarantine for themselves as preferable to living among those who revile them.
Our cities are full of these collections of unusual people who band together to form a society within a society, hoping the majority will leave them alone. They build their own leper colonies, referring to them as “communities.” For many, as long as the basic human needs are available in the colony, it provides a safer, less stressful place to live. Separate but almost equal.
Everyone who experiences such an epiphany goes through a grieving process. When we lose our claim to healthy, “normal,” or even attractive, we are wounded emotionally just as surely and suddenly as a soldier shot in battle is wounded physically. It may be superficial, or it may be terminal. We may bounce right back, we may be long in recovery, or we may not make it. Unfortunately, for most of us, at the very least some of the gloss fades from our eyes. We tend to feel cheated and resentful. We are destined to go through the rest of our lives with an additional burden, and we ask, why me?
Those wounds cannot heal until we quit asking that question. No matter what affliction it was we discovered in ourselves, healing of the emotional wound always leaves a scar, and maybe even some loss of sensation. But we can learn to accept our affliction, wear our scar without shame, and make the best of the only life we have. In time, we may even perceive that our difference is not an affliction at all, but merely a marker of our uniqueness.
What might happen if we ventured into the other colonies of lepers, without fear, with respect and compassion? Our travels might lead us to understand that whatever strain of leprosy sets our group apart; we gain nothing by despising the others. Perhaps we could begin to heal our own emotional wounds if we greeted others with compassion and respect.
(With inputs from various lepers and their organisations)