| View Larger Image | Carville: Remembering Leprosy in America | Hardcoverby Marcia Gaudet (Author), James Carville (Foreword)
| List Price: | $28.00 | | Price: | $24.94 | | You Save: | $3.06 (11%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Hardcover | | Publisher: | University Press of Mississippi | | Page Count: | 221 Pages | | Publication Date: | December 02, 2004 | | Sales Rank: | 796,726th |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Mysterious and misunderstood, distorted by biblical imagery of disfigurement and uncleanness, Hansen's disease (or leprosy) has all but disappeared from America's consciousness. In Carville, Louisiana, the closed doors of the nation's last center for the treatment of leprosy hold stories of sadness, separation, and even strength in the face of what was once a life-wrenching diagnosis. Drawn from interviews with living patients and extensive research in the leprosarium's archives, "Carville: Remembering Leprosy in America" tells the stories of former patients at the National Hansen's Disease Center. For over a century, from 1894 until 1999, Carville was the site of the only in-patient hospital in the continental United States for the treatment of Hansen's disease, which is the preferred designation for leprosy. Patients --- exiled there by law for treatment and for separation from the rest of society --- reveal how they were able to cope with the devastating blow the diagnosis of leprosy dealt them. Leprosy was so frightening and so poorly understood that entire families would suffer and be shunned if one family member contracted the disease. When patients entered Carville, they typically left everything behind, including their legal names and their hopes for the future. Former patients at Carville give their views of the outside world and of the culture they forged within the treatment center, which included married and individual living quarters, a bar, and even a jail. Those quarantined in the leprosarium created their own Mardi Gras celebrations, their own newspaper, and their own body of honored stories in which fellow sufferers of Hansen's disease prevailed over trauma and ostracism. Through their memories and stories, we see their very human quest for identity and endurance with dignity, humor, and grace. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.5 based on 4 reviews)
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Fascinating by Joleen Koch (Montana, USA)  4 Stars
July 26, 2007
With a natural wonder for all things morbid and the inner lives of people that struggle, I was curious to know the details about leprosy as a disease and also about the personal details of the people that suffered with it. This book gave enough scientific facts about the disease to quench my curiousity, and also managed to give a personal perspective, delving into the details of the lives of, and even quoting, victims of the disease that lived when leprosy was still misunderstood greatly. I read the entire book, then ordered, "The Colony", a book about a leper colony that existed on an island in Hawaii. I found that book very dry, as it traced the character's lives very factually. It was so much like a history book that I couldn't even make it quite half way through.
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Not comprehensive but it's a small book by kohoutekdriver8 (Midwest)  3 Stars
September 14, 2006
I have been aware of the Carville facility since I read Betty Martin's "Miracle at Carville" as a child, and was delighted to learn about 10 years ago that at that time, she was still living. The book was very respectful of her privacy, not revealing her real name even though she died in 2002.
It was a superficial history of the facility and its newsletter, "The Star", which probably did more to promote knowledge about this interesting disease than anything else.
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A Disappointment by Cardinal  2 Stars
June 27, 2006
Gaudet's book fails to tell us very much about the day to day lives of Carville's patients. Granted, she does relate stories about the Mardi Gras parade and about sneaking off the grounds (I was surprised by the largely positive reactions of the outside community). But time after time, I would read a passage and want to know more. After finishing the book, I hardly had any more knowledge about Hansen's Disease and the Carville experience than I had before I began reading it.
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reflecting on carville by Claire Manes (louisiana)  5 Stars
January 11, 2005
This book deserves a more intensive review than this, but it also deserves to be read,so I will at least share some random reflections on it. Carville is the name of a small community in south Louisiana. It is also a euphemism for the location of the hospital that for more than 100 years treated patients with leprosy (preferably called Hansen's disease.) As such Carville was a place of mystery and curiosity. Marcia Gaudet's new book of recollections takes the mystery out of the place and shows it to be the home of an intensely courageous group of people, stigmatized for their condition but never defeated. The book which has much to offer to the scholar and the lay reader alike records the memories of trauma and grief that Hansen's disease patients endured. But the book does not stop with trauma. It relates the formation and growth of a community with its own traditions (escaping through the hole in the fence), celebrations (Mardi Gras) and tall tales. For anyone with even a casual interest in the lives of people in intensely painful situations the book is an inspiration and a must read.
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SIMILAR PRODUCTS |
| In the Sanctuary of Outcasts: A Memoir
by Neil White (Author)
Daddy is going to camp. That’s what I told my children. A child psychologist suggested it. “Words like prison and jail conjure up dangerous images for children,” she explained. But it wasn’t camp . . . Neil White, a journalist and magazine publisher, wanted the best for those he loved—nice cars, beautiful homes, luxurious clothes. He loaned money to family and friends, gave generously to his church, and invested in his community—but his bank account couldn’t keep up....
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| Triumph at Carville
Directed By: John Wilhelm, Sally Squires
Profiles Carville, a former Louisiana antebellum plantation that provided 100 years of service to Hansen's disease (formerly called leprosy) and documents the struggle and eventual success at treating, but not curing, this disease.
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| Squint: My Journey with Leprosy (Willie Morris Books in Memoir and Biography)
by Jose P. Ramirez Jr. (Author), James Carville (Foreword)
Lying in a hospital bed, José P. Ramirez, Jr. (b. 1948) almost lost everything because of a misunderstood disease. When the health department doctor gave him the Handbook for Persons with Leprosy, Ramirez learned his fate. Such a diagnosis in 1968 meant exile and hospitalization in the only leprosarium in the continental United States--Carville, Louisiana, 750 miles from his home in Laredo, Texas. In Squint: My Journey with Leprosy, Ramirez recalls being taken from his family in a hearse...
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| The Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai
by John Tayman (Author)
Beginning in 1866 and continuing for over a century, more than eight thousand people suspected of having leprosy were forcibly exiled to the Hawaiian island of Molokai -- the longest and deadliest instance of medical segregation in American history. Torn from their homes and families, these men, women, and children were loaded into shipboard cattle stalls and abandoned in a lawless place where brutality held sway. Many did not have leprosy, and many who did were not contagious, yet all were...
| | | Disease Apart: Leprosy in the Modern World
by Tony Gould (Author)
This fascinating cultural and medical history of leprosy enriches our understanding of a still-feared biblical disease.
It is a condition shrouded for centuries in mystery, legend, and religious fanaticism. Societies the world over have vilified its sufferers: by the sheer accident of mycobacterial infection, they have been condemned to exile and imprisonment—illness itself considered evidence of moral taint.
Over the last 200 years, the story of leprosy has witnessed dramatic...
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