The Year of the Great Red Scare

36 Historically Speaking May/June 2008 the disease itself). At the same time, die phrase suggests a nuance of segregation, which corresponds equally to the image of leprosaria and to die reports of roving leprosi. The residents of several leprosaria were grouped as enemies of society in one notorious episode in 1321, when they were accused of conspiracy and burned at the instigation of the kings of France and Aragon. Well into the 16th century, bands of leprous beggars—often striking fear into the burghers—drew attention to a shared fate of separateness, which was underscored by displays of destitution, deformities, and despair. It is misleading , however, to refer to "a society of outcasts," as does the subtitle of a frequently cited history of leprosy in the Middle Ages. Separateness did not give rise to cohesive association among people with leprosy . This lack of group identity stands in contrast to the solidarity among AIDS patients and activists, which uniquely characterizes modern American society . It is instructive to compare responses to medieval leprosy and to modern AIDS, from fear to moralizing and from exclusion to outreach. The juxtaposition sheds light on various facets of the two societies. It illuminates, I think, more differences than similarities. There is a wide range of parallels. These, however, when examined more closely, reveal distinctive features rather than adding up to repetition , linear progress, or mirror image. At the risk of leaning toward relativism, I believe that the comparison between the two historic diseases leads us to the ever-flowing river of Heraclitus. After years of studying leprosy in premodern medicine, the exploration of a presumably modern counterpart convinces me that history does not repeat itself. And yet, an element of Parmenidean permanence, too, runs from the past to the present—and die future. Both the treatment of leprosiand the attitude toward AIDS patients follow "the course of human nature," as Thucydides might say. Luke Demaitre is visitingprofessor of history at the University of Virginia School of Medicine's Center for BiomedicalEthics andHumanities. His most recent book is Leprosy in Premodern Medicine: A Malady of the Whole Body (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007). The Year of the Great Red Scare Anthony Read At 10:45 pm on December 30, 1918, a bomb exploded at the home of Ernest T. Trigg, president of the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, followed ten minutes later by another at the apartment of acting superintendent of police William B. Mills, blowing him out of his bed and into a corridor ten feet away; minutes after that, a third bomb blew the front off the house of Supreme Court Justice Robert von Moschzisker. Miraculously, no one was killed or seriously injured in any of the blasts. In crudely printed circulars found at the scenes of the explosions, addressed "To the exploiters, the judges, policemen , the priests, the soldiers," anonymous anarchists claimed responsibility. Ignoring the anarchist connection, Captain Mills announced that the bombings "were part of the plot which the Bolsheviki are starting on a nationwide scale. I think that they started in Philadelphia and that outbreaks may be expected any day and in any part of the country." Amid a massive security operation, Mills's officers picked up a fifty-six-year-old former hat maker, Edward Moore, whom the Philadelphia Inquirer labeled "one of the city's most intractable revolutionists," on the grounds that he had associated widi such well-known troublemakers as the Socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs, who had been sentenced to a ten-year prison term for speaking out against the war, and Big Bill Haywood, leader of the syndicalist union, the Industrial Workers of the World (TWW), who had been convicted of a similar offence. "We are holding him [Moore] right here in "For Export." An anti-Boshevik cartoon from The Independent, July 19, 1919. City Hall, incommunicado," Mills told reporters. "I don't give a damn if he is being held without the advice of an attorney. I will even refuse him the rights of Habeas Corpus. This is not the time for legal technicalities. They used brute force, and the Police Department, in hunting these criminals down, will resort to the same methods." The Chief...