Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Disease: One Man's Journey Through a Life with Leprosy
    The Disease: One Man's Journey Through a Life with Leprosy
    The Disease: One Man's Journey Through a Life with Leprosy
    Ebook188 pages2 hours

    The Disease: One Man's Journey Through a Life with Leprosy

    By Anne Harmon Brett

    5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Before there was social distancing, there was social isolation: the author's mother was confined to a leper colony for over 20 years. Her husband, Johnny P. Harmon, a good looking and intelligent Texan had dreams of becoming a Texas A&M civil engineer. Without warning, he also becomes a leper. He becomes a member of society's most feared and ostracized community. Johnny initially thinks that being confined to Carville would amount to a death sentence. Within a short time, he begins a new life for himself within the barbed wire fences of Carville. He creates a successful photography business, becomes a passionate advocate for the patients and falls in love with another patient.

    This memoir speaks of one person's fortitude to live the best life possible no matter what the circumstances. It speaks of determination, resilience, and courage. It is also a history of the National Leprosarium in Carville, Louisiana from 1930 to 1955 when patients were treated more like inmates in a prison than patients in a hospital. But most of all, it is a love story about two patients who were discouraged from marrying and having children by hospital authorities. The book contains 30 images of photos, paintings, cartoons and illustrations by Johnny.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateDec 1, 2019
    ISBN9781543991369
    The Disease: One Man's Journey Through a Life with Leprosy

    Related to The Disease

    Related ebooks

    Medical Biographies For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Compassion of GIANTS

      Jun 25, 2019

      The Compassion of GIANTS
      4 min read

    • Article

      World-Class Fall Foliage

      Sep 17, 2021

      Fall is a magical time of transition and renewal, symbolized by changing weather and colorful leaves. While New England autumns often get the most hype, the season is celebrated in places far beyond this region, and vibrant foliage is welcomed throug

      2 min read

    • Article

      Anne Boleyn Had Stayed In France?

      Sep 8, 2022

      Hayley Nolan is an historian and the author of Anne Boleyn: 500 Years of Lies (Little A, 2019). She launched the Be More Boleyn campaign with the Houses of Parliament. In 1522, Anne Boleyn returned to England from France, where she had spent part of

      5 min read

    • Article

      ‘Absolute Evil’: The Horrors Of A Russian Prison Camp

      Aug 12, 2022

      Screams from soldiers being tortured, overflowing cells, inhuman conditions, a regime of intimidation and murder. Inedible gruel, no communication with the outside world, and days marked off with a home made calendar written on a box of tea. This, ac

      3 min read

    • Article

      Image Was Everything

      Mar 2, 2020

      Image Was Everything
      5 min read

    • Article

      Getting Gayer

      May 3, 2022

      Getting Gayer
      1 min read

    • Article

      Who the Fuck Knows

      May 2, 2017

      Who the Fuck Knows
      11 min read

    • Article

      Pompeii Fresco Find Possibly Depicts 2,000-year-old Form Of Pizza

      Jun 27, 2023

      A striking still life fresco resembling a pizza has been found among the ruins of ancient Pompeii, although the dish seems to lack two essential ingredients – tomato and mozzarella – and includes an item that looks suspiciously like a pineapple. The

      3 min read

    • Article

      Beauty

      Aug 10, 2021

      Like many people today, the Romans used makeup to reduce visible signs of aging and achieve glowing skin. Roman cosmetics ranged from homemade do-it-yourself remedies to high-end products, such as costly saffron eye shadow, that were targeted to a we

      1 min read

    • Article

      Memphis Police Have Disbanded The 'Scorpion' Unit That Fatally Beat Tyre Nichols

      Jan 29, 2023

      The Memphis police chief disbanded the city's so-called Scorpion unit on Saturday, citing a "cloud of dishonor" from newly released video that showed some of its officers beating Nichols to death.

      5 min read

    • Article

      No Babies, No More Nazis

      May 27, 2021

      A recent article in British Vogue posed the question: “Is having a baby in 2021 pure environmental vandalism?” The answer seems obvious to me, given that babies are responsible for 90 per cent of all the world’s carbon emissions. (That’s probably the

      1 min read

    • Article

      Books for Anyone on Your List

      Nov 25, 2022

      Books for Anyone on Your List
      7 min read

    • Article

      ‘Right Now, There Is Not A Great Deal Of Trust In The Police’: Why TV Is Filled With Bent Coppers

      Mar 16, 2023

      When I was recovering at home after a brief stint in hospital in 2021, I spent weeks watching British crime dramas. I became adept at telling the red-herrings from the genuine clues, and the wrong ’uns from the unfairly accused. I didn’t care that th

      5 min read

    • Article

      View From Brazil

      Oct 9, 2022

      The overwhelming majority of Brazilians (75 per cent) support democracy, according to a recent survey by Datafolha, our most reputable polling firm. Seven per cent prefer a dictatorship. Coincidentally, in another survey from the same pollster, that

      2 min read

    • Article

      Why We Should Remember…

      Sep 1, 2022

      175 YEARS AGO How did Charlotte Brontë get Jane Eyre published? Charlotte (pictured right, c1850) spent her childhood and adolescence writing fantasy sagas in collaboration with her siblings. Her first publication was a family project, too: a collect

      2 min read

    • Article

      Inside The Vault

      May 20, 2021

      Inside The Vault
      10 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Disease

    5/5

    1 rating0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Disease - Anne Harmon Brett

      cover.jpg

      All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

      Print ISBN: 978-1-54399-135-2

      eBook ISBN: 978-1-54399-136-9

      DEDICATION

      This book is dedicated to the Daughters of Charity who unselfishly cared for the Carville patients from the very beginning in the most adverse conditions. They showed love and compassion when even the families of these patients had abandoned them. They were not afraid of touching the patients when no one else would.

      This book is also dedicated to Dr. Paul Brand, a renowned hand surgeon and his wife, Dr. Margaret Brand. Although there have been many incredible physicians who have worked at Carville, Dr. Paul Brand did more for the patients than any other single doctor. He developed surgery to correct clawed hands, designed footwear so patients would not harm their feet and created occupational therapy programs so patients could work. They lived and worked at Carville for 20 years.

      Dr. Paul Brand traveled around the world educating both the medical profession and the general public about the true facts of leprosy. He was also an author of several books based on Christian principles and the human body. The Brands’ greatest gift was the love for their patients.

      Contents

      Foreword

      Preface

      Acknowledgments

      Introduction

      Growing Up in Hankamer, Texas

      My Family

      Elmo’s Diagnosis

      Honky-Tonking

      Dreams of Being an Engineer

      The Working World

      A Satsuma Christmas 1931

      Elmo’s New Life 1934

      A Look Back in History

      Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul

      My Destiny

      My Trip of a Lifetime

      My Greatest Fears Come True

      Entry into Carville 1935

      The Fever Machine

      The Triche Family

      The Sheriff is Coming to Get You

      Carville, A World of Its Own

      Martin

      Even Carville Celebrates Mardi Gras

      Jobs at Carville

      My Passion: Photography

      Freedom

      Back Home Again

      The Texas Highway Department

      Lonesome for Love

      Symptoms Return

      More Adventures Out West

      Two Sons Are Buried

      Unrequited Love

      Darkest of Days

      Return to Carville 1942

      A New Carville

      New Medicines, New Hope

      The Star: Educating the World

      World War II

      A Love Rekindled

      Wedding Bells

      A Home of Our Own

      Children?

      The Becnels

      Be Fruitful & Multiply (Gen. 1:28 KJV)

      Sad Journey Home to Texas

      Changes at Carville

      A New Adventure

      Vacherie, La

      JC and Polio

      Harmon’s Photo Shop

      Why?

      Epilogue

      Afterword

      Endnotes

      Foreword

      There are a few times in life when you recognize that something very special is happening as you live it rather than appreciating those moments later. So, it was with my visits to Carville, Louisiana, home to Public Health Service Hospital No. 66.

      I first visited Carville in 1989 on assignment for the Washington Post, where I was a health writer. Post photographer, Carol Guzy, who was a former nurse, accompanied me. We both fell in love with the patients and the facility itself, a stately old plantation that was right out of central casting for Gone with the Wind. The stories and photographs ran in the Washington Post Health section, but both Carol and I knew that we had only scratched the surface of this very unusual public health service hospital. We vowed to return.

      That opportunity came in 1997, as the facility was being transferred from the federal government back to the state of Louisiana. It was then that we first met Johnny P. Harmon and his wife, Anne.

      Each had entered the facility at a young age: Anne was a child of about 10 years; Johnny was 24. Each had leprosy—The Disease—in their families.

      Anne’s mother was already a patient when she and her younger brother, Andre, then about four years old, arrived from their home in Vacherie, Louisiana. Within four months, their brother, Butch, 13, entered Carville too. Their mother was heartbroken to find that her children had also contracted leprosy.

      In Johnny’s family, it was his older brother, Elmo, who first developed The Disease and was sent from their Texas home to Carville for treatment. So, when Johnny later found lesions on his arm that he suspected correctly were leprosy, he knew that Carville was also likely in his future.

      Many people might have given up. But one of the extraordinary things about Johnny was his resilience. He was whip-smart, had a wry sense of humor and a spirit that soared high like the planes that his beloved nephew A.J. flew. The most despised illness in history may have infected him, but his spirit was immune. At every disappointment and hurdle, he found a new path forward.

      Part of that path was meeting and falling in love with Anne. The two had an epic love story that included a clandestine church wedding outside of Carville, thanks in part to the assistance and blessings of the Daughters of Charity. It also included two children—a son, Johnny Charles (JC) and a daughter, Anne Mary. While they never lived together as an intact family, they were tightly knit, nonetheless. Johnny and Anne made sure that their children were well cared for and educated. Both earned college degrees: Anne Mary in journalism and JC in engineering.

      As outgoing as Johnny was, Anne was the opposite, at least on the surface. She spoke little and was not eager to engage visitors to Carville, especially journalists. It took time to gain her trust. So, when she said that we could contact her daughter, Anne Mary, and son, JC, I knew that an important barrier had been broken.

      What I didn’t expect was that this introduction would also be the beginning of a long, close friendship that continues today, some 25 years later after first meeting JC and Anne Mary. Their daughter, Anne Mary Harmon Brett, is a kindred spirit, who has become a beloved sister by bond rather than blood. For that reason, I am delighted that she has freshened her father’s memoir and brought it to a wider audience.

      Leprosy is an ancient Biblical disease that still exists today. It is caused by a mycobacterium that is a cousin of tuberculosis. Other than humans, the only creatures known to develop leprosy are the armadillo. Scientists still don’t know where this infection resides in nature or exactly how it is spread. To develop leprosy requires both a genetic susceptibility to The Disease and exposure. The good news is that 95 percent of the population is immune to this mycobacterium. Even so, an estimated 200,000 new cases are diagnosed annually and about two million people worldwide live with leprosy, according to the World Health Organization.

      The reason most people are unaware that leprosy still exists is that the treatments developed at Carville enable those with The Disease to live in the general population without fear, of stigma or deformity. None of that would have been possible without the help and sacrifices of Johnny and Anne Harmon and the thousands of patients who passed through Carville’s gates.

      Sally Squires

      Author, Former Award-Winning Journalist at The Washington Post, Filmmaker of the PBS Documentary, Triumph at Carville: A Tale of Leprosy in America

      Washington DC

      September 2019

      This book is an adaptation of King of the Microbes, the memoir of

      Johnny P. Harmon. It incorporates additional sources and was edited by his daughter, Anne Harmon Brett.

      Preface

      Johnny P. Harmon had leprosy. He never considered himself a leper. He despised the word. He wrote his book to educate the public about this mysterious disease. He simply called it …THE DISEASE.

      A Norwegian scientist, Dr. Gerhard A. Hansen, was the first scientist to discover the mycobacterium leprae bacillus in 1873. Because of the stigma of Biblical leprosy, the medical community has now called it Hansen’s Disease.

      We Have Changed the Name but Not the Disease

      Johnny was my father. He always talked about writing a book about the uncertain paths that controlled the direction of his life. Daddy loved to write, especially letters. If he liked something, he wrote a letter. He liked Steen’s sugar cane syrup, so he wrote to the company and let them know how much he loved the syrup on his waffles. The following week, there was a case of Steen’s syrup on our doorstep.

      If he didn’t like something, he also wrote a letter. If he really didn’t like something, he also included a detailed drawing of how this object could be improved. He wrote a letter to Sears about his brand-new refrigerator. He didn’t like the way Mom’s bowl of gumbo didn’t fit on the middle shelf. A month later, the Sears delivery man arrived with a new refrigerator. He removed the despised refrigerator and placed the new one in the kitchen. No charge.

      A.J. Harmon was Daddy’s nephew, but he was also Daddy’s closest friend. A.J. and I felt that Daddy’s passion for writing could be channeled into a book of his life. He finally agreed to write his book.

      Daddy was 75 years old when he dusted off his old Remington typewriter and started typing. Because he had lost some of the strength in his hands, it was difficult for him to strike the keys on the typewriter. Within a short time, I introduced him to a word processor. This made it much easier for him to type. He cranked out disc after disc of written material. Eventually, he bought a computer and his writing really took off. He wrote for five years without stopping.

      He wrote about whatever was in his mind that day. He wrote about his mother, his childhood, his dreams of being an engineer, his love of airplanes, the loves of his life, the cars he owned, the trips he took, his photography business, math problems, and Beethoven. He was the Forrest Gump of writing.

      His book was a collection of subjects that were not connected. It wasn’t written in chronological order. He jumped from his childhood experiences to math problems to life at Carville all on one page. He also repeated the same stories throughout the book. There were no chapter headings. The book was one big paragraph. It was a difficult document to read. It was not a narrative.

      Besides writing his memoirs, he also included some of his photographs, paintings, and cartoons in the book. He glued his hand-drawn logo of King of the Microbes on the cover. He chose this title because leprosy is caused by the germ, mycobacterium leprae. He mimeographed the book and handed it out to friends and relatives to review. Daddy was doing a test run before paying to have it printed. Franklin Press in Baton Rouge printed the book without any editing. Despite its condition, Daddy was very proud of his book. He was a one-man marketing, sales, and advertising machine. At the Carville hospital, he would ride up and down the walkways on his three-wheel bicycle peddling his book. In case he missed a sale, a person could always read his large advertising sign on the back of his bike as he drove away. He sold approximately 800 copies.

      When the Carville leprosarium which included the hospital facility, research lab, and patient housing was rumored to close, journalists from around the world descended upon Carville looking for a good story. Daddy was always available to talk about his life and of course, his book. Most of the journalists walked away from the interview with a great story and an autographed copy of the book under their arm.

      Daddy never met a reporter he didn’t like. He was interviewed by all the national TV networks. He was featured in NPR’s radio program All Things Considered. There were articles published in Life Magazine,

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1