It is an ancient illness whose origin dates back to the first dawns of the world: leprosy.
Few words bring with them so many symbols and prejudices;
out of fear too, and out of ignorance, above all.
Already mentioned by the Eternal to Moses and Aaron in Leviticus, this millennial disease has never disappeared from the surface of the planet.
It overwhelmed the peoples of West Africa (its probable cradle) and texts already mention it in China, India and Egypt from 600 BC.
Read alsoDr Bertrand Cauchoix: “Leprosy is a disease that makes its bed on poverty”
Claude Galen, one of the most influential men of science and medicine of the Greco-Roman era, mentions it in his writings as the “elephant disease”.
Today, this same bacterium called
Mycobacterium leprae
(from the Greek "lepis" meaning "scale, crust of a wound") or Hansen's bacillus (after the Norwegian scientist who discovered it in the 16th century) continues to affect 3 million of people around the world.
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