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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Recorded presentation

Julie Levison, MD, MPhil, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Internal Medicine Residency, 75 Francis Street, Boston, MA 02115, 617-732-6660, jlevison@partners.org

Leprosy has held a special role in the history of disease and illness. From biblical times to the modern period, leprosy has been a disease associated with stigma. The history of leprosy in Puerto Rico is an important model of how public health authorities selected models for disease control and how the recipients of these policies, the patients, lived in the aftermath of these strategies. The public health policies that developed over the period of 1898 to the 1930s were unique to Puerto Rico because of the interplay between political events, scientific developments, and popular concerns during this time. During this period, imperial nations, like the United States, expanded their empire into tropical regions. Puerto Rico became a new colony of the United States in 1898, and two years later military authorities collected Puerto Rico's leprosy sufferers and isolated them on islet called Isla de Cabras. During the United States' initial occupation of Puerto Rico extreme segregation sacrificed the individual rights and liberties of these patients for the benefit of society. The lives of these leprosy sufferers were irrevocably changed as a result.

Learning Objectives: