Leprosy in Premodern Medicine
Demaitre, Luke (Visiting Professor of History, University of Virginia) While premodern poets and preachers viewed leprosy as a disease of the soul, physicians in the period understood it to be a cancer of the whole body. This book explores the medical and social perspectives on leprosy at a time when judicious diagnosis could spare healthy people from social ostracization and help the afflicted get a license to beg.