Triumph at Carville: A Tale of Leprosy in America (review)

For slightly more than one hundred years, Carville, Louisiana, was the site of the hospital for the treatment of leprosy, a mildly contagious condition that strikes fear in the hearts of those ignorant of the disease and creates pain and stigma for its sufferers. One would think that such a location would be a bleak and dismal place. However, as John Wilhelm and Sally Squires attest in their production, Triumph at Carville, such is not the case. The town and the hospital became the home for an internationally recognized facility for the management of Hansen's disease, the preferred term for leprosy. The hospital itself, the United States Public Health Services Hospital #66, later called the Gillis W. Long Hansen's Disease Center, became the home and community for both those diagnosed with the condition and for the dedicated personnel who served there.

The fifty-six minute documentary chronicles the one hundred years of history that built the hospital and created the Carville community. The program traces the saga of the hospital from the arrival of seven patients, five men and two women, in 1894 through the hospital's closure in 1999, when the facility was transferred to the state of Louisiana for use as a youth challenge program. As the title suggests, the film is hardly an overly sentimental treatment of a misunderstood disease and its victims. Rather, it is a testimony to the spirit and resiliency of the patients, some who were involuntarily incarcerated in the hospital or abandoned there by family. Sharing in their triumph and in the Carville story were the dedicated personnel intent on finding a cure for leprosy. Patients and staff alike share in the triumphant story that is Carville and the video that chronicles their ultimate success.

Using a montage of pictures, artwork, video interviews, news clips, and news reels, the producers weave a tapestry valorizing the history of the hospital from its beginnings as a haven for those stigmatized with leprosy and labeled with the odious name, "leper," through the miracle cures of the 1940s, to the hospital's ultimate closure in 1999. The video wends its way through one hundred years of history, meandering as surely and inexorably as the Mississippi River that flows in front of the hospital. In less than an hour the video manages to connect the history of leprosy, Carville, and the patients isolated on the 350-acre institution graced by magnificent oaks. Using spliced interviews with professionals from disciplines including folklore, medical ethics, medical history, and theology as well as conversations with doctors, religious women, former patients, employees of the hospital, and residents of Carville, Triumph at Carville tells the story of the pain of isolation and stigma faced by the patients who did not simply endure their isolation but created a community of meaning and joy.

The video demystifies fears about leprosy's contagion (95 percent of the population has a natural resistance to it) and its relation to the biblical disease of the same name (Hansen's disease is not the disease described in the Book of Leviticus). It traces the treatment of the disease and dramatizes the discovery in the 1940s of drugs that wrought cures that some patients considered miraculous. Short but concise, the documentary is a rich compendium of education for anyone interested in information about Hansen's disease.

The information is not confined to the science and medicine surrounding the disease. The film also focuses on the heroes of Carville: the patients themselves, including activists such as John Early and Stanley Stein, whose efforts brought attention to the plight of those with leprosy; the sisters who worked tirelessly and professionally as nurses, researchers, scientists, and pharmacists; and the doctors who struggled to find an effective treatment for the disease, a search that was first rewarded in Dr. Guy Faget's efforts in the 1940s.

Even more compelling than the valuable information contained in...