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History of the National Leprosarium ("Carville")
Hearings on leprosy, which had been delayed,
but had remarkable results, were held on Capitol
Hill in February of 1916. Two days of discussion
centered on the subject, "Care and Treatment
of Persons Afflicted with Leprosy." The
legislation under consideration was S. 4086,
a bill introduced by Senator Joseph E. Ransdell,
of Louisiana, "to provide for the care
and treatment of persons afflicted with leprosy
and to prevent the spread of leprosy in the
United States."
William M. Danner, appointed Chairman of the
American Mission of Lepers in 1911, had become
so indignant at the inhumane treatment of leprosy
patients in this country that he sought out
Surgeon General Rupert Blue of the Public Health
Service to urge the establishment of a National
leprosarium. Surgeon General Blue referred Mr.
Danner to Senator Ransdell, Chairman of the
Senate Committee on Health and National Quarantine.
"In introducing this bill I had not heard
from a single man in Louisiana on the subject,"
Senator Ransdell explained at the hearings.
"This matter was first brought to my attention
by Mr. Danner ... He told me of the number of
lepers in the United States, of the horrible
condition of many of them, some of them being
in solitary confinement and suffering like criminals,
and his story impressed me with the necessity
of something being done, and I introduced this
bill at his suggestion."
Seldom has the National scene been better set
for an unusual undertaking. Surgeon General
Blue himself had worked on leprosy when he served
as an advisor to the Government of Hawaii. He
had, on his staff in Washington, 2 medical officers,
both valued assistants to him in San Francisco,
who had even more experience with leprosy in
Hawaii. One was Dr. W.C. Rucker, Assistant Surgeon
General in charge of Domestic Quarantine, who
had campaigned for the appointment of Dr. Blue.
The other was Dr. George W. McCoy, Director
of the Hygienic Laboratory, who had closed out
the Federal Leprosy Experimental Station on
the Island of Molokai just before coming to
Washington. Both Dr. Rocker and Dr. McCoy testified
in behalf of the Ransdell bill.
Chairman Ransdell, of course, represented one
of the two States that already had leprosarium,
Louisiana and Massachusetts. Their stories were
retold in Washington. The presentation made
concerning the leprosarium at Carville, Louisiana,
was spectacular. Dr. Isadore Dyer, then the
Dean of the Medical School of Tulane University,
came to Washington from New Orleans to testify.
He was the physician, a specialist in disease
of the skin, who had started the leprosarium
at Carville about twenty years earlier in the
face of odds that were almost overwhelming.
His tremendously powerful appeal was a simple
summary of how he had succeeded in starting
a leprosarium in Louisiana.
Dr. Dyer had a special interest in leprosy
as a young professor at Tulane University. The
New Orleans Daily Picayune conducted a campaign
calling attention to the fact that Louisiana
had an unusually large number of persons suffering
with Hansen's disease, and that they were not
well cared for. Dr. Dyer joined this cause.
Kendall wrote an article about eight men and
two women victims living together in squalid
cottage rented by the city of New Orleans. Dr.
Dyer appealed for a home for these (victims).
On June 9, 1894, Dr. Dyer presented the Louisiana
legislature with a plan, endorsed by the local
medical society, to set up an institution for
persons having leprosy. Dr. Dyer planned to
create this institution close to Tulane University
where it could be used as a hospital for experiments
in the treatment of Hansen's disease, and as
a laboratory to study the bacillus that Hansen
had discovered. The legislature in August 1894,
voted a small sum to buy the place, and created
a Board of Control of four physicians and three
laymen to set up and run the leprosarium. Dr.
Dyer was made president of the Board. But the
citizenry rose up against him in every place
where he tries to set up the institution. He
could not buy a single site for the treatment
of leprosy in the city of New Orleans.
At last, Mr. Allen Jumel, a member of the House
of Representatives of the State of Louisiana,
and a member of the board of Control of the
Leper Home was able to negotiate a five-year
lease on a site eighty-five miles up the Mississippi
River. Both Mr. Jumel and his wife owned estates
near there. He put the deal over under the pretense
that it would be used as an ostrich farm. It
was purchased outright by Louisiana in 1905.
Known as Indian Camp Plantation, the leprosarium
consisted of a decaying manor house and dingy
slave quarters. Its magnificent live oak trees
were hung with Spanish moss. A high levee separated
it from the Mississippi River. To this run down
farmstead five men and two women patients were
taken by coal barge on, the night of November
30,1894. No other form of transportation could
be arranged for these unfortunates. The barge
was towed by a tug boat containing its captain
and crew, Dr. Isadore Dyer, a group of newspaper
reporters, a ton of provisions, bedding, and
eighty beds donated by the New Orleans Charity
Hospital to Carville, and taken there on the
first boat run. Mr. Jumel, on horseback, met
the tug and its barge. The patients were put
into one of the slave cabins in the care of
Dr. L.A. Wailes, resident physician, but not
to be forgotten by Dr. Dyer.
Late in March 1896, Dr. Dyer made a trip to
Baltimore, Maryland to arrange for the nursing
of the patients and the household management
at Carville. Dr. Dyer contracted on March 25
an agreement with Mother Mariana, in charge
of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de
Paul at Emmitsburg, Maryland. The State Board
of Control of the Leper Home in Iberville Parish,
Louisiana, promised to furnish sleeping and
living arrangements to the Sisters of Charity
to be sent there by Mother Mariana. The Board
agreed to set up for them a chapter and to arrange
for the services of a priest. The Board would
pay each sister one hundred dollars a year "for
clothing and other incidentals". The Sister
Superior in charge at Carville was to be held
accountable to the Board alone for management
of the Sisters. They were to have full charge
of domestic management of the kitchen and household;
and of the detail of nursing which was at all
times to be under the direction of the "resident
physician."
The final paragraph of the agreement ran: "This
contract cannot be annulled except by mutual
agreement between the State Board of Control
of the Leper Home and the Order of the Sisters
of Charity."
The first group of four Sisters of the order
founded by St. Vincent de Paul and officially
named Daughters of Charity, arrived at Carville,
April 27, 1896, with Sister Beatrice Hart in
charge.
Dr. Dyer immediately introduced at Carville
a medicine long used in India in the care of
leprosychaulmoogra oil. He found it more useful
than any other medicine tried out in leprosy
treatment. In the 1916 hearing, Senator Reed
Scoot, of Utah, remarked that there is no cure
for leprosy.
Dr. Isadore Dyer replied that he had cured
thirty cases in the last twenty years, thus
dating his first cure back to 1896.
In pleading for the sufferer from leprosy,
Dr. Dyer said, "He not only bears all the
burdens of his disease, but he also bears the
burdens of centuries of opprobrium which make
him psychologically different from a patient
suffering from any other disease."
William Danner particularly told the stories
of two persecuted victims of the disease, Mock
Sen, an educated young Chinese who died in a
sealed boxcar being shuttled back and forth
across State lines to shuffle responsibility
for his illness; and John Early, who had been
persecuted in the District of Columbia before
being sent to Carville. John Early returned
to Washington in 1915, and appeared at the 1916
hearing with the statement: "I am Early,
a patient from the leper colony at Carville,
Louisiana. I have come to tell you gentlemen
something about how much we patients need to
have that colony made over into a United States
hospital." Mr. Early was in and out of
Carville until November 1928, when he was discharged
as cured. He died in 1938, at 64 years of age.
Senator Ransdell's bill for a National Leprosarium
was signed into law a year later, on February
3, 1917. The acquisition of the hospital was
delayed for four years more by the First World
War, which this country entered on April 6,
1917. Mr. Danner made a trip to Louisiana in
January 1919 to revive interest in the sale
of the Louisiana home for a National Leprosarium.
The Louisiana Leper Home was purchased from
the State of Louisiana on January 3, 1921. The
United States flag was raised February 1, with
Dr. Oswald E. Denny in charge.
*Excerpted verbatim from A Profile of the United
States Public Health Service 17981984 Bess Furman,
Washington, D. C.: U. S. Government Printing
Office, DHEW Publication No. (NIH) 73369, PP.
308311.
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