{ 191 } Notes Chapter 1. Carville, Leprosy, and Real People 1. See also Brody 1974 and Richards 1977 for more on medieval leprosy. For more on the early history of hospitals for the isolation of leprosy patients, see chapter 4, “Hospitals as Segregation and Confinement Tools: Leprosy and Plague,” in Risse 1999 (167–229). 2. Over the next century, 112 Daughters of Charity were assigned to Carville. Among them were Sister Hilary Ross, who came to Carville in 1922 and served for thirty-seven years, first as a pharmacist and then as a biochemist. Sister Hilary’s unpublished journal is the source of much information about Carville. Sister Laura Stricker came to Carville in 1925 and served for forty-seven years as a medical records librarian and pharmacist. Sister Laura also directed theatrical productions and music at Carville. Many, like Sister Francis de Sales Provancher, Sister Rose D’Alfonso, Sister Margaret Brou, and Sister Francis Louviere, stayed at Carville as volunteers after their retirement . For more on the Daughters of Charity at Carville, see With Love in Their Hearts: The Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, 1896–1996, a Carville Centennial Publication edited by Julia Elwood. 3. See Kalisch 1972 for more on “The Strange Case of John Early.” 4. For more information, see February 2001 issue of the science journal Nature. 5. For more on Carville’s history, see Gussow 1989 and Calandro 1983. For more on the history of leprosy, see Trautman 1985. 6. Julia Rivera Elwood addresses the issue of Louisiana’s role in the care and treatment of leprosy patients in the 1996 publication honoring the Centennial of Daughters of Charity at Carville. In a section entitled “Kudos to Louisiana,” she says: It may be odd that Louisiana harbored the only leprosarium on the American Continent. The reason was that, historically, Louisiana, beyond all other states combined, pioneered in the study, treatment, and suppression of the malign disease. To the Pelican State in a large part belongs the credit for the relative rarity of leprosy in our country at the present time. On Louisiana soil the major battles against the disease have been fought ever since the days of the Spanish occupation when Governor Ulloa, in 1766, established the first lazaretto, or quarantine leper colony, at Balize, about 80 miles below New Orleans. [1996: 51] 7. Since quarantine laws were established by individual states, it is difficult to establish an exact date when leprosy was no longer subject to quarantine in the United States. Patients from other states on official leave had to get permission to travel through any state en route. Most states prohibited leprosy patients from traveling on public transportation . By 1960, most patients were admitted to Carville on a voluntary basis. 8. Though I have heard that there was a “Colored House” at one time, it does not seem that races were segregated in any other way. According to Tanya Thomassie, a longtime staff member and current director of public relations, the assignment to a specific house was based on “similarities in culture, education, and nationality, rather than racial divisions” (Thomassie 2004). She also said that languages, food, and music preference were often deciding factors, as well as simply the requests of the patients themselves. It should be noted that a very small percentage of patients at Carville were African American. In her 1994 publication on the Carville centennial, Julia Elwood quotes an unidentified source on statistics at Carville in the 1950s, when there were about four hundred patients: About 40% of the patients are foreign born, with Mexicans predominating . Next to the Mexicans come Chinese, and then Greeks. Of the { 192 } Notes [18.191.174.168] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 10:01 GMT) American born patients, few are negroes. Leprosy is not prevalent among the negroes in the United States, but when they do contract it they become very bad cases. All in all, there are representatives of 26 states and 20 nationalities. (Elwood 1994: 46) Chapter 2. “An Exile in My Own Country” 1. Culbertson deals with acute trauma and survivors of physical violence, and her theories are not wholly applicable to the kind of trauma suffered by HD patients. For example, recovered memory is not a part of HD patients’ experience. The memory of leprosy may be silenced, but it is never totally repressed. But Culbertson’s ideas about bodily memory do have some relevance for those who lived in what may be...