Do check out this series of stunning photos on a disease of the Middle Ages that persist today even though it is treatable, leprosy in Brazil:
A disease like leprosy, which leaves people with deformities is more likely to generate stigma, exclusion and marginalization especially when it is thought that it is contagious and can be caught through casual contact. At the same time, it is a disease of exclusion and marginality itself.
One cannot help but be reminded of Foucault’s idea that hospitals were not necessarily places of care but as places of deviance management where deviants (whether sick or insane) could be safely guarded out of the way of decent society, under the moral authority of the Church, then, later of the medical profession. It is not surprising that the more deviant categories trigger fears in the general population, the more their institutionalization will be demanded from some corners. The same thing happened at the beginnings of the AIDS epidemic and then, more recently:
A stigma, then, is a two-way phenomenon, cause and effect: based on preexisting stigmatization (whether it is marginalization due to poverty in the case of leprosy or religion in the case of homosexuality), moral entrepreneurs will demand further stigmatization and exclusion from society, with no plan for reintegration at some later point. In all cases, this boils down to a purification of the “normal” population from its deviants but hidden behind rationalizations about health or rehabilitation or some imaginary danger to society.
