So little was known about her affliction, and the void was filled with terror. Though her husband’s main interest was infectious diseases, he knew far more about tuberculosis, which caused some thirty thousand deaths a year in the islands, than leprosy. Mycobacterium leprae was among the first bacilli identified, back in 1873, but it remained a medical mystery. It wasn’t part of the standard medical school curriculum, and few physicians bothered to learn about it. There was no vaccine for leprosy, and no one could say for sure whether it was hereditary or a contagious disease. It was commonly believed that you got leprosy by sharing food or drink with a leper or by touching an infected person. In the Philippines, leprosy sufferers hid the early symptoms under clothing as long as possible, until it was no longer an option. When the lesions couldn’t be covered, victims were ejected from their communities, becoming charity cases, outcasts, or beggars, forced to leave behind their lives, their jobs, their loved ones.
