Miracle at Carville. By Betty Martin. (John Lehmann. 12s. 6d.)
Miracle at Carville. By Betty Martin. (John Lehmann. 12s. 6d.)
A GAY young American girl, engaged to be married and looking forward to a happy future, was overwhelmed by tragedy at the age of nineteen. She developed leprosy. She spent twenty years at a hospital for lepers in Louisiana before she came out, cured, into the ordinary world. The facts about leprosy that emerge are startling. The references to it in the Bible and in literature ever since have surrounded it with a sense of horror. It is this horror that makes the tragedy for the patients at Carville as much as the physical sufferings caused by the disease. Many of them, including the writer, hid themselves under assumed names, in order to protect their relations. Yet the disease is but "feebly communicable." It appears to arise only in certain geographic areas, and the most ordinary hygienic measures will keep it at bay. Father Damien took no such precautions, and moreover came from an area in France where it occurs. No doctor or nurse in Carville ever con- tracted the disease.
The " miracle " about which " Betty Martin " writes is the cure afforded by some of the new sulphur drugs. This, together with growth of knowledge about the disease, is revolutionising the position of sufferers. If it can be accepted as no worse than tuberculosis with which it is intimately allied, the stigma will be removed. The book is written with simplicity and emotion, which never sinks to sentimentality. Courage, unselfishness and love irradiate it.
H. F.
Previous page
