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Leprosy and Citizenship

Leprosy and Citizenship positions 6:3 Winter 1998 lected the unfortunates and exiled them to Culion, a barren island in the Calamianes group. A conventional historical account might end at this point: it would be the usual sad tale of stigmatization and segregation. We all know this story. For thousands of years, Europeans have represented lepers as unclean, tainted, and dangerous; contact with leprosy often has been equated with moral and physical contamination. Thought to have disappeared from western Europe and most of the United States in the nineteenth century (yet still endemic in Scandinavia), leprosy was rediscovered during this period in the imperial world and associated with the customs and habits of “inferior races.” First at Molokai, Hawai‘i, in the 1870s, then at Culion, public-health officers from the United States organized the rigorous segregation of any afflicted local inhabitants. While the criteria for exile at Molokai had initially been clinical, by the end of the century the medical definition of leprosy focused on the presence of Hansen’s bacillus, Mycobacterium leprae, in the nasal scrapings of suspects.2 Once identified bacteriologically, the leper faced permanent separation from family and village. Most of those sent to Molokai had to fend for themselves: their isolation http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png positions asia critique Duke University Press

Leprosy and Citizenship

Anderson, Warwick
positions asia critique , Volume 6 (3) – Dec 1, 1998
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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright 1998 by Duke University Press
ISSN
1067-9847
eISSN
1527-8271
DOI
10.1215/10679847-6-3-707
Publisher site
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Abstract

positions 6:3 Winter 1998 lected the unfortunates and exiled them to Culion, a barren island in the Calamianes group. A conventional historical account might end at this point: it would be the usual sad tale of stigmatization and segregation. We all know this story. For thousands of years, Europeans have represented lepers as unclean, tainted, and dangerous; contact with leprosy often has been equated with moral and physical contamination. Thought to have disappeared from western Europe and most of the United States in the nineteenth century (yet still endemic in Scandinavia), leprosy was rediscovered during this period in the imperial world and associated with the customs and habits of “inferior races.” First at Molokai, Hawai‘i, in the 1870s, then at Culion, public-health officers from the United States organized the rigorous segregation of any afflicted local inhabitants. While the criteria for exile at Molokai had initially been clinical, by the end of the century the medical definition of leprosy focused on the presence of Hansen’s bacillus, Mycobacterium leprae, in the nasal scrapings of suspects.2 Once identified bacteriologically, the leper faced permanent separation from family and village. Most of those sent to Molokai had to fend for themselves: their isolation

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positions asia critique – Duke University Press

Published: Dec 1, 1998

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