Book Review of "Leprosy in Premodern Medicine. A Malady of the Whole Body" by Luke Demaitre PhD

Luke Demaitre's Leprosy in Premodern Medicine: A Malady of the Whole Body is a highly interesting study of the medical history of leprosy and the medical and social perceptions on leprosy that have been around for centuries. Remarkably, it is likely that leprosy will disappear from the face of the Earth in our generation, thanks to the development of a curative treatment and its increasing availability (although the battle has not yet been won completely). Demaitre's book is a very good read not only for its information about leprosy but also for all interested in or affected by the social phenomenon of stigma. In illnesses such as leprosy, HIV/AIDS, epilepsy, and mental disorders such as schizophrenia, the stigma attached to the condition may be worse than the condition itself. Book details Demaitre Luke: Leprosy in Premodern Medicine. A Malady of the Whole Body Baltimore, MD, The Johns Hopkins University Press; 2007:xv + 323. ISBN 10: 0-8018-8613-9 If we read Leviticus Chapter 13, it seems that leprosy once was such a dire affliction that even the LORD seemed to have no mercy on those who suffered from this disease. Here are the words of Leviticus in Chapter 13: "And the LORD spoke unto Moses and Aaron, saying, When a man shall have in the skin of his flesh a rising, a scab, or a bright spot, and it be in the skin of his flesh like the plague of leprosy; then he shall be brought unto Aaron the priest, or unto one of his sons the priests: And the priest shall look on the plague in the skin of the flesh: and when the hair in the plague is turned white, and the plague in sight be deeper than the skin of his flesh, it is a plague of leprosy: and the priest shall look on him, and pronounce him unclean." Priests played for a long time a leading role in examination and diagnosis; it was only in the second half of the thirteenth century that learned physicians moved to the center stage of leprosy management. However, as leprosy was a "special" disease, icons of pre-modern medicine dealt with it much earlier and as profoundly as it was possible with the knowledge available at their time: Outstanding examples are Galen of Pergamum (ca. 129–200 AC), Avicenna (who, at around 1000 AC, under his Arab name Ibn Sina compiled the Arab Canon of Medicine which in its Latin translation by Gerard de Dremona became the standard medical encyclopedia of Europe's medieval time); as well as Bernard de Gordon (undisputed authority at the University of Montpellier in the 13th century). The notion that leprosy is a contagious and hereditary disease – both characteristics that constitute a personal disaster for those afflicted – developed as a result of longstanding perceptions which stood the test of time well Published: 31 October 2007 Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine 2007, 2:24 doi:10.1186/1747-5341-2-24 Received: 9 October 2007 Accepted: 31 October 2007 This article is available from: http://www.peh-med.com/content/2/1/24 © 2007 Schmitt; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.