Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T14:14:21.861Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 July 2009

Rod Edmond
Affiliation:
University of Kent, Canterbury
Get access

Summary

Revulsion and fear have been the most common responses to leprosy since biblical times, yet there is slight medical basis for the recurring stigmatisation of a disease with such a very low level of infection. Leprosy, it seems, has had extraordinary potential for becoming more than itself. The reasons for this, the myths that accrued around the disease, and particularly the manner in which these were refashioned in the modern colonial period, is the subject of this book.

Carlo Ginzburg has described the panic in early fourteenth-century France around an alleged conspiracy of lepers to kill the healthy by poisoning the fountains and wells. As alarm spread, the rumoured conspiracy grew to include the Jews (there was an ancient tradition that among the ancestors of the Jews was a group of lepers driven out of Egypt), and then, somewhat improbably, the Muslim king of Granada. Ginzburg argues that lepers and Jews were pariah groups because of their ambiguous borderline status. Lepers were unclean, but loving them was, as Francis of Assisi had shown, a sign of sanctity. Jews were the deicide race but also those to whom God had chosen to reveal himself. Muslims were the threat from without, the menacing world beyond Christendom, conspiring with those groups within whose marginality made them susceptible to promises of wealth and power, as well as potential targets of social purification. Ginzburg also sketches a wider social context for this outbreak of victimisation.

Type
Chapter
Information
Leprosy and Empire
A Medical and Cultural History
, pp. 1 - 23
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Introduction
  • Rod Edmond, University of Kent, Canterbury
  • Book: Leprosy and Empire
  • Online publication: 17 July 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511497285.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Introduction
  • Rod Edmond, University of Kent, Canterbury
  • Book: Leprosy and Empire
  • Online publication: 17 July 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511497285.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Rod Edmond, University of Kent, Canterbury
  • Book: Leprosy and Empire
  • Online publication: 17 July 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511497285.001
Available formats
×