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How Leper Colonies Worked · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from House Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
0:13
Speaker 1: There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry should Know. Okay, unclean? Unclean?
0:21
Speaker 1: What is that from? I think that's what people with
0:24
Speaker 1: leprosy were. They had to say, They had to like
0:27
Speaker 1: ring a bell and say unclean when they walked through
0:30
Speaker 1: town to people would avoid them. I knew about the bell. Yeah,
0:34
Speaker 1: I think they would have to say unclean. Early sets
0:36
Speaker 1: the story I heard man alive. Yeah, so he says
0:40
Speaker 1: it all. It really does. Leprosy sinks stigma. Yeah, well yeah,
0:46
Speaker 1: Handsome's disease. I think is the preferred term for it
0:50
Speaker 1: these days, is it? Uh huh? I knew what was
0:54
Speaker 1: called that, but I have like every article I saw,
0:56
Speaker 1: I didn't even mention that. I don't know it's I
1:00
Speaker 1: don't know who it's who's preferring it. Mr Hanson, I
1:03
Speaker 1: guess whoever he is. Well, he's a nineteenth century I think,
1:07
Speaker 1: um Swedish or Danish physician, the guy who just who
1:13
Speaker 1: who discovered the actual bacteria that that does it. Yeah,
1:18
Speaker 1: because we're talking leprosy and it's a bacterial infection after all. Yeah,
1:23
Speaker 1: I think when folks hear the word leprosy or lepro colony,
1:26
Speaker 1: they a lot of times may not even know what
1:28
Speaker 1: the heck it is. And um, yeah, I guess we
1:32
Speaker 1: should start off with just talking about the disease a
1:33
Speaker 1: little bit. Yeah, it's an ancient disease. I actually found
1:36
Speaker 1: something from um the beginning of two fourteen, and they
1:41
Speaker 1: discovered a new a new form of leprosy, new to humans,
1:47
Speaker 1: but it's actually very old. But the the fact that
1:50
Speaker 1: they can take this new form, the newly discovered form,
1:55
Speaker 1: and compared to the one we've known about for centuries. Um,
2:00
Speaker 1: they actually found that the fact that they diverged so
2:04
Speaker 1: long ago makes them suspect that it's possible that leprosy
2:09
Speaker 1: Hanson's disease is the oldest infectious disease to humans around. Really. Yeah,
2:16
Speaker 1: they think that it definitely originated in Africa, that it
2:19
Speaker 1: traveled out with humans in However, many waves that went
2:23
Speaker 1: out of Africa spread around the rest of the world.
2:25
Speaker 1: And one of the tell tale signs that it's extremely
2:30
Speaker 1: old is that it only infects humans. As far as
2:34
Speaker 1: we know, it doesn't infect any other animals except supposedly armadillos,
2:40
Speaker 1: and they think that armadillos caught it from humans is
2:43
Speaker 1: recently as a hundred or two hundred years ago. Well,
2:45
Speaker 1: that's why if you're gonna see leprosy in the United States,
2:48
Speaker 1: you're probably gonna find it in Texas or Louisiana because
2:51
Speaker 1: the armadillos. Yeah, crazy weird, there is leprosy here, I guess. Um,
2:57
Speaker 1: I bet most people think that it's not in the
2:59
Speaker 1: United States at all, but um, it is. It's super rare. Uh.
3:03
Speaker 1: The CDC says they get about a hundred new cases
3:05
Speaker 1: a year in the US um, which is super super low,
3:11
Speaker 1: and only about twenty to forty of those are people
3:14
Speaker 1: born um in the United States, like usually the other
3:19
Speaker 1: forty eight I guess are bringing it in from another
3:22
Speaker 1: country and have it for years without knowing it. Because
3:28
Speaker 1: leprosy generally takes four to six years to manifest itself.
3:32
Speaker 1: I've seen ten to twenty. Well, I mean it can't
3:35
Speaker 1: take that long, but generally four to six years, which
3:37
Speaker 1: is a big problem because first of all, it's it's rare.
3:44
Speaker 1: But even in the parts of the world where it's
3:45
Speaker 1: not all that rare, like you can be infected with leprosy,
3:48
Speaker 1: like you said, for many, many years. And even if
3:52
Speaker 1: you do start to show symptoms, they don't just automatically
3:56
Speaker 1: point to leprosy. They can be skin rashes, respiratory problems
3:59
Speaker 1: or something like that. So by the time a doctor says, oh,
4:03
Speaker 1: you have Handson's disease, you're in big trouble. Or it
4:08
Speaker 1: used to be the case. Yes, but now it is
4:11
Speaker 1: completely curable, which is great news. UM. It is also
4:15
Speaker 1: not contagious at all, hardly UM. Human beings have a
4:20
Speaker 1: natural immunity. So the the biblical times of uh of
4:25
Speaker 1: in in the Middle Ages where lepers were uh and
4:28
Speaker 1: we'll get to all this, but when they were thought
4:30
Speaker 1: like if you come anywhere close that you're going to
4:32
Speaker 1: get this dread of disease, it's never been true. Yeah.
4:35
Speaker 1: The thing is is as ancient as leprosy is. UM.
4:40
Speaker 1: They still don't know exactly how it's transmitted. They assume
4:43
Speaker 1: that it's transmitted like most other bacterial infections, like either
4:47
Speaker 1: through um saliva or mucus, through a sneeze or something
4:51
Speaker 1: like that, um or through cracks in the skin, and UM.
4:55
Speaker 1: I saw both that it's either very hard to catch
4:58
Speaker 1: or it's not that already catch I saw that it
5:01
Speaker 1: doesn't live outside of the human body for very long,
5:04
Speaker 1: or it can still remain potent in um, like just
5:08
Speaker 1: basically on some sort of surface or whatever. Yeah. Um,
5:14
Speaker 1: but that that the last idea that it doesn't serve,
5:17
Speaker 1: that it doesn't stay active outside the human body for
5:21
Speaker 1: very long, is supported by the fact that they've never
5:23
Speaker 1: been able to come up with the leprosy vaccine because
5:27
Speaker 1: it can exist outside of the human body, which is
5:29
Speaker 1: another idea or another reason why they think it's a
5:32
Speaker 1: very ancient human disease because it's specifically tailored for humans.
5:37
Speaker 1: And do you know how how it works? Yeah? Sure,
5:42
Speaker 1: Well you want to talk about how it actually what
5:45
Speaker 1: it is, and then how it affects you. Well, it
5:49
Speaker 1: is their little microbes called Microbacterium lepray l e p
5:54
Speaker 1: r a e, their little tiny rod shaped microbes, and
5:58
Speaker 1: they infect the body, and you will get skin sores
6:01
Speaker 1: and nerve damage and muscle weakness, and you're you're gonna
6:06
Speaker 1: not be able to feel pain, which leads to more problems,
6:09
Speaker 1: like you will end up getting amputations because of gang
6:12
Speaker 1: green because you injured your toes or your your hands
6:15
Speaker 1: and you don't even know it. Yeah, Um. And the
6:18
Speaker 1: way that it does that on a cellular level is
6:21
Speaker 1: the um. The leprosy Bacterium hijacks what are called your
6:26
Speaker 1: schwan cells, your schwan cells. Um. They typically make some
6:32
Speaker 1: sort of fatty coating for um muscle and nervous system tissue,
6:38
Speaker 1: right okay. And it turns schwan cells into stem cells,
6:43
Speaker 1: which is pretty magical if you ask me, and it says,
6:47
Speaker 1: go forth and go infect um the muscle tissue of
6:51
Speaker 1: this human and let's see what we can do. So
6:54
Speaker 1: like again, it's basically perfectly tailored to infect and hijack
7:00
Speaker 1: the human body and affect you in all these horrible,
7:03
Speaker 1: terrible ways. Like it shortens your fingers is one of
7:07
Speaker 1: the symptoms, meaning that they just kind of start going
7:11
Speaker 1: back like pencil nubs that have been sharpened too many times. Yeah,
7:16
Speaker 1: it was. If you're a Biblical scholar, you have seen
7:19
Speaker 1: the word leprosy a lot in the Bible. But um,
7:21
Speaker 1: it didn't necessarily mean this specific disease. It could have
7:25
Speaker 1: been a variety of things like eczema or cirrhosis. Because
7:29
Speaker 1: the word leprosy in the King James Bible in Hebrew. Uh,
7:34
Speaker 1: Sarah could be a host of diseases that kind of
7:38
Speaker 1: make you look gnarly on the outside. But there is
7:41
Speaker 1: a passage in at least in Um I think Leviticus,
7:46
Speaker 1: which is old man, yeah uh, and it says that
7:52
Speaker 1: you Hebrews are supposed to keep an eye on anybody
7:55
Speaker 1: who has a skin sore, and if that skin sore
7:58
Speaker 1: starts to spread, that person the leper in there to
8:02
Speaker 1: live outside of camp. There's kind of an early understanding
8:06
Speaker 1: of contagious disease. Yeah, they didn't necessarily know what it
8:09
Speaker 1: was or what was going on, but they knew enough
8:12
Speaker 1: to say, you who hang out over there, right, because
8:16
Speaker 1: we've seen before that if people with hands the disease
8:19
Speaker 1: hang out with everybody else, other people can catch it. Yeah.
8:23
Speaker 1: And that was the beginning of what would end up
8:25
Speaker 1: being leper colonies. And we'll talk about that a little
8:28
Speaker 1: more right after this break. So at first there were
8:40
Speaker 1: no leper colonies per se. They were generally just shuttled
8:45
Speaker 1: to the outskirts of the city or camp in London.
8:50
Speaker 1: Queen Matilda and one one one eight uh founded I
8:56
Speaker 1: guess a camp that people could still come back into
8:59
Speaker 1: t own and like beg for money and stuff, but
9:03
Speaker 1: they were always to go back to their camp at
9:05
Speaker 1: the end of the day. Yeah, just you know, just
9:07
Speaker 1: basically open land. It wasn't necessarily like some awful place
9:12
Speaker 1: to be UM. A lot of times, like these wealthy
9:15
Speaker 1: landowners would endow this land to keep these people there. Yeah,
9:20
Speaker 1: the because they were sequestered or ostracizeders just kept outside. UM.
9:26
Speaker 1: People with leprosy effectively formed subculture or um a subset
9:33
Speaker 1: of the population. So you would have, like say in
9:36
Speaker 1: a medieval town, like the Jewish section and the the
9:41
Speaker 1: um lepers section, and then like the uh the blacksmiths
9:46
Speaker 1: or whatever, and the executioner had to stay outside of town.
9:48
Speaker 1: So they were just like the right and they were
9:51
Speaker 1: but I mean, they were like a a subset of
9:54
Speaker 1: society UM. And they were very frequently the butt of
10:00
Speaker 1: all sorts of reigns of terror. Like people would be like, well,
10:04
Speaker 1: everybody's getting sick, so somebody poisoned the wells and it
10:09
Speaker 1: was probably the lepers, and then the lepers all the
10:11
Speaker 1: lepers would be rounded up and killed. So lepers UM
10:14
Speaker 1: definitely were subjected to execution. As recently as I think UM,
10:19
Speaker 1: I saw the nineteen thirties and in nineteen thirty seven
10:22
Speaker 1: in China, soldiers were like hunting down lepers and executing
10:26
Speaker 1: them for being lepers. Yeah, I mean, I think we've
10:29
Speaker 1: talked about this a lot on the show. People fear
10:31
Speaker 1: what they don't understand as a society, and they didn't
10:34
Speaker 1: understand leprosy. They didn't know where it came from. They
10:36
Speaker 1: thought it might be hereditary, they thought it was super contagious,
10:40
Speaker 1: like just touching someone would infect you and so uh
10:43
Speaker 1: and just because of the appearance that someone with leprosy
10:46
Speaker 1: would have it, you know, they didn't want to see them.
10:49
Speaker 1: They wanted them away so they couldn't be infected, and
10:52
Speaker 1: so they didn't have to look at it, right. Okay.
10:54
Speaker 1: So the thing is is, up until the nineteenth century,
10:58
Speaker 1: basically all the they were a subset of society. They
11:01
Speaker 1: were still technically part of society. Lepers were even though
11:04
Speaker 1: they lived on the outskirts away from town, they were
11:06
Speaker 1: still part of society. In the nineteenth century, there was
11:10
Speaker 1: a movement to basically say, like, we don't want you
11:12
Speaker 1: to have anything to do with us any longer, Like
11:15
Speaker 1: you go over there, like you're not a part of
11:17
Speaker 1: our society any longer. You're your own thing, just go
11:21
Speaker 1: away forever. And there was actually a law in Illinois,
11:24
Speaker 1: I guess in Chicago and ordinance. It was called an
11:27
Speaker 1: ugly law. Yeah, and eight one. Uh said, Uh, any
11:33
Speaker 1: person whose disease are deformed so as to be unsightly
11:37
Speaker 1: or disgusting object has to stay away off the streets
11:40
Speaker 1: and away from public places. Yeah, because that's how they
11:43
Speaker 1: talked in Chicago. So I know, so I've seen Saturday
11:46
Speaker 1: a lot before. Uh So, no longer are you allowed
11:51
Speaker 1: in town to beg for thing like, Yeah, we we
11:54
Speaker 1: decided like we don't want to look at you any longer,
11:56
Speaker 1: so you are not a part of our culture any longer.
12:00
Speaker 1: And that was in Chicago alone. This this happened elsewhere.
12:03
Speaker 1: There was an outbreak in um the eighteen fifties in Hawaii,
12:09
Speaker 1: and the Hawaiian government said, um, yeah, I think we're
12:12
Speaker 1: going to finally just say you guys can't be part
12:16
Speaker 1: of our culture any longer. And so they made leprosy
12:20
Speaker 1: a crime. So if you had leprosy, you were a criminal,
12:25
Speaker 1: and therefore you could be excommunicated, ostracized, banished as under law. Yeah,
12:32
Speaker 1: that was when it was Hawaii was an independent monarchy.
12:35
Speaker 1: And uh, in eighteen sixty five they passed the Act
12:38
Speaker 1: to Prevent the Spread of Leprosy. And like you said,
12:42
Speaker 1: they might as well have been they were criminals. Um.
12:45
Speaker 1: And as the article opens up in eighteen seventy nine,
12:48
Speaker 1: they describe a night in January where they police officers
12:52
Speaker 1: rounded up a bunch of people with stricken with leprosy
12:56
Speaker 1: and basically sent them off on a boat to Kalapapa Peninsula.
13:03
Speaker 1: And so this is your new home and you're not
13:05
Speaker 1: ever gonna leave. So it makes the the analogy of
13:09
Speaker 1: a prison. But uh, it points out that even in
13:12
Speaker 1: a prison you can get visitors and you may get
13:14
Speaker 1: out one day when your sentence runs out. If you
13:16
Speaker 1: have leprosy, you could not have any contact and you
13:19
Speaker 1: were there for life, very very messed up. Yeah, and
13:23
Speaker 1: that apparently for leper colonies that were run like prisons,
13:29
Speaker 1: where the patients were treated like prisoners. Yeah, they weren't
13:33
Speaker 1: being attended to like a hospital. No, it was like
13:36
Speaker 1: you're in jail. Yeah. Uh. That there was a particularly
13:40
Speaker 1: difficult for say, like the warden of the jail because
13:43
Speaker 1: you couldn't you couldn't use the same kind of carrots
13:48
Speaker 1: and sticks that you could on a typical prisoner because
13:51
Speaker 1: there was no hope that you were ever going to
13:54
Speaker 1: leave the leper colony. And that was part of the point,
13:57
Speaker 1: like it was your relationship with so ide at large
14:00
Speaker 1: was severed and you were never coming back. Kids were
14:04
Speaker 1: taken from their families um at very young ages, like
14:09
Speaker 1: knowing that they were never going to see them again. Yeah.
14:13
Speaker 1: This one guy. That was a quote from a superintendent
14:15
Speaker 1: of a South African leper colony on Robin Island. His
14:19
Speaker 1: name was sp Imp and he said in his notes
14:23
Speaker 1: in the eight nineties, you cannot starve them, you cannot
14:25
Speaker 1: flog them. All you can do is deprived them of
14:27
Speaker 1: their liberty, which is really sad. You know. So a
14:32
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of places set up actual prisons inland,
14:36
Speaker 1: but a lot of countries said, yeah, that island over
14:40
Speaker 1: there that nobody wants, you're gonna make that a leper colony.
14:42
Speaker 1: So there were places in the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean,
14:45
Speaker 1: in the Pacific um off of South Africa, like you
14:48
Speaker 1: just said. But one of the most famous leper colonies
14:52
Speaker 1: of all time was that one. I think it's colat
14:56
Speaker 1: Papa Papa if I know my native Hawaiian, and it
15:00
Speaker 1: would be Ka Papa Peninsula on Molokai. And in eighteen
15:05
Speaker 1: sixty six, a year after they enacted that um leprosy
15:09
Speaker 1: criminal Code in Hawaii, they set it up. And it
15:13
Speaker 1: was different because you didn't need any fences or walls
15:17
Speaker 1: or anything like that, just the natural surrounding of the place.
15:20
Speaker 1: It was a peninsula, so it's surrounded on three sides
15:22
Speaker 1: by water. And then it just so happened that on
15:25
Speaker 1: that fourth side that was connected to land, there's a
15:28
Speaker 1: sheer two thousand foot cliff. So they were trapped. They
15:31
Speaker 1: were trapped, but they were trapped in paradise and it
15:33
Speaker 1: had an effect. It had a different effect it did,
15:37
Speaker 1: and we will talk about that effect right up with
15:38
Speaker 1: this break. So, Josh, you were talking about the different
15:44
Speaker 1: effect that uh, this leper colony in Hawaii had because
15:49
Speaker 1: it wasn't it was Hawaii after all. Yeah, you know,
15:52
Speaker 1: I I don't want to make light of it. But
15:54
Speaker 1: it was a nice place. It was very fertile. Um,
15:56
Speaker 1: they grew vegetables. Um, they had a lot of food supplies.
16:00
Speaker 1: Local fruits were rampant, and um. There was a Belgian
16:05
Speaker 1: born Roman Catholic priest name Reverend Joseph da Voster who
16:09
Speaker 1: went by Father Damien, and he really made a huge
16:12
Speaker 1: difference in the life of these people. Um tried to
16:15
Speaker 1: make it as normal sort of like a village as
16:18
Speaker 1: he could. You know, they built the schools, they built
16:20
Speaker 1: um churches. Uh. He started choirs and planted trees, started
16:25
Speaker 1: a band. So he gave these people a life like
16:29
Speaker 1: as much of a normal life as they could have.
16:31
Speaker 1: He treated them like people, which like human beings yeah,
16:34
Speaker 1: um so. And not just human beings, but also people
16:39
Speaker 1: who had an infectious disease like patients. Yeah, patients who
16:43
Speaker 1: um could still walk and talk and move around and
16:45
Speaker 1: and needed some sort of distraction or some sort of fulfillment.
16:48
Speaker 1: Father Damien came and and and gave this to these people.
16:52
Speaker 1: He also badgered the government for money, which was good
16:55
Speaker 1: because they actually had an advocate for the first time.
16:59
Speaker 1: It was basically like the Fifth Avenue or Regulars, but
17:03
Speaker 1: on the leprec Colony in Hawaii, Yes right. Unfortunately, very sadly,
17:08
Speaker 1: Father Damien himself got leprosy and died at the young
17:12
Speaker 1: age of forty nine and eight eighty nine, but he
17:15
Speaker 1: was canonized as a saint SAT hundred and twenty years
17:18
Speaker 1: later during the Big SAT sweep of oh nine. So
17:21
Speaker 1: that was that's a pretty neat ending to that story
17:24
Speaker 1: for him. Um and that the Lepred Colony and Kalaupapa Peninsula.
17:31
Speaker 1: And I'm proud of myself for saying that one. Right
17:33
Speaker 1: that is now a national park. It was created or
17:36
Speaker 1: turned into a national park in nineteen eighty. But the
17:39
Speaker 1: crazy thing is there's still people that live there, at
17:43
Speaker 1: least as recently as two thousand three. What do you
17:46
Speaker 1: mean people that live there, like people with rosy Um.
17:50
Speaker 1: There's a guy I saw, I guess in two thousand three.
17:53
Speaker 1: There were a lot of people that were that were
17:56
Speaker 1: told they could leave or something. I think they were
17:59
Speaker 1: just waiting for the last generation to die out. And
18:02
Speaker 1: they said, you know what, we've got this thing kind
18:05
Speaker 1: of licked here in the United States. So if you
18:08
Speaker 1: guys want to leave, go ahead. And some people said,
18:11
Speaker 1: I've spent my literally my entire life here. I don't
18:15
Speaker 1: want to leave. This is my home. So it's a
18:17
Speaker 1: national park with inhabitants, which is rare. Yeah, that's a
18:21
Speaker 1: good point. Uh. In the nineteen twenties in the US,
18:24
Speaker 1: UM we started to change our tune a little bit,
18:27
Speaker 1: and the U. S. Public Health Service said, you know what,
18:30
Speaker 1: let's start a leper colony in Carville, Louisiana. It's actually
18:34
Speaker 1: a hospital of sorts where we treat these people and
18:37
Speaker 1: try and make their life better and defined try and
18:40
Speaker 1: find a cure, which is I think what directly led
18:43
Speaker 1: to the first drugs in the nineteen forties being established,
18:48
Speaker 1: one called promn um that apparently is a pretty nasty
18:53
Speaker 1: way to treat it because the injections were so painful,
18:56
Speaker 1: but it was a good start. So UM it was painful,
19:00
Speaker 1: apparently they figured out but it wasn't antibiotic that did work,
19:04
Speaker 1: and they figured out that if you added it to
19:07
Speaker 1: a cocktail of other drugs, Apparently it was easier to
19:12
Speaker 1: take um because it was in pill form, I think
19:14
Speaker 1: is what they changed it to in the fifties where
19:18
Speaker 1: sixties um, and then they added it to other drugs
19:20
Speaker 1: because the the bacteria was starting to get resistant to
19:25
Speaker 1: this antibiotic alone. They came up with a cocktail in
19:28
Speaker 1: the sixties or seventies and now have a regiment that
19:31
Speaker 1: can cure cure um leprosy in six months. And it
19:36
Speaker 1: all came out of this leopro colony at Carville, Louisiana,
19:39
Speaker 1: And there's a really really neat documentary called Triumph Fat
19:43
Speaker 1: Carville about that, about how this place in Louisiana was
19:47
Speaker 1: the place where humanity licked leprosy. And it's Carver Louisiana
19:52
Speaker 1: is named after James Carville's family, and he's in it.
19:54
Speaker 1: He talks a lot about it. Yeah, he grew up
19:57
Speaker 1: like down the road from it. I could listen to
19:59
Speaker 1: him talk just that accent, for sure, I love it.
20:01
Speaker 1: But apparently like there was this kind of open secret
20:04
Speaker 1: that uh inhabitants would just leave every once in a while,
20:09
Speaker 1: and there was like a bar nearby where they would
20:12
Speaker 1: go and like drink beers and everything. They just sneak
20:15
Speaker 1: out and sneak back in drunk, like in the fifties
20:19
Speaker 1: or whatever. For everybody has kind of left them alone,
20:21
Speaker 1: and they did their own thing and domentary. It took,
20:26
Speaker 1: obviously a cure um for leprosy to begin to change
20:30
Speaker 1: the the stigma, and that I did start to turn
20:33
Speaker 1: on that stigma in the nineteen sixties and lepro colonies
20:37
Speaker 1: started to close one by one. Um. I think in
20:40
Speaker 1: Japan there were one of the last nations to quarantine patients. Uh,
20:46
Speaker 1: they ended it in nine. I think in Romania there
20:50
Speaker 1: is still one colony where supposedly there were a few
20:54
Speaker 1: elderly patients still there. But Indias, where it's a huge problem,
21:00
Speaker 1: still not a huge problem, but the biggest problem. Well,
21:03
Speaker 1: there's a lot of debate over just how big of
21:06
Speaker 1: a problem leprosy is. Apparently the World Health Organization has said, uh,
21:12
Speaker 1: we basically want to eradicate leprosy, and so a lot
21:16
Speaker 1: of people accuse them of fudging the numbers. Is one
21:18
Speaker 1: doctor put it like the best way to eradicate a
21:21
Speaker 1: diseases to stop reporting. So there's between say, I think
21:25
Speaker 1: the World Health Organization says a hundred thousand, two hundred
21:28
Speaker 1: fifty thousand new cases a year, and this one doctor,
21:32
Speaker 1: who admittedly has to do with this um leprosy vaccine, uh,
21:38
Speaker 1: says no, I think it's more between like a million
21:40
Speaker 1: and two and a half million new cases a year.
21:42
Speaker 1: Those are new cases. Yeah, I thought there were less
21:44
Speaker 1: than two hundred thousand. Period. The reporting is all over
21:47
Speaker 1: the place, and it's questioned. That's all I can say
21:51
Speaker 1: about that. India, Brazilian, Indonesia the top three countries and
21:56
Speaker 1: I know that in India. Um, there's a colony in
21:59
Speaker 1: Casturba gro Um near New Delhi, and it's it's still
22:03
Speaker 1: has that stigma there. Uh. There there are people there
22:06
Speaker 1: that are curative leprosy that stay there because their families
22:09
Speaker 1: don't want them back. Um, if you have leprosy, you
22:14
Speaker 1: are still likely to be ostracized away from your family
22:17
Speaker 1: because it has They just think it reflects badly. If
22:20
Speaker 1: you have like a boy and a girl and the
22:22
Speaker 1: boy has leprosy and the girl doesn't like that, girl
22:24
Speaker 1: won't even be able to find a husband because the
22:27
Speaker 1: brother in law has leprosy. So they're still sending them
22:31
Speaker 1: behind closed doors, which is super sad because it's just
22:35
Speaker 1: a disease like any other and it's very treatable. It's
22:37
Speaker 1: because of the stigma of how it makes you look,
22:40
Speaker 1: you know. Uh. And I saw this thing that was
22:43
Speaker 1: an inmate in an Ohio prison this week that was
22:48
Speaker 1: just treated for leprosy. Uh. He was just discharged from
22:51
Speaker 1: Ohio State Medical Center, House State University Medical Center, the
22:55
Speaker 1: Ohio State Medical Center, and he was just treated for
23:01
Speaker 1: like a few days. Apparently, once you start this drug cocktail,
23:04
Speaker 1: they can cure you in six months. But you're not
23:06
Speaker 1: even infectious after like a few days of it. So
23:09
Speaker 1: they put him back into prison and he he had
23:12
Speaker 1: it before he you know, he had had it for years. Uh, man,
23:15
Speaker 1: how did you get it in Armadillo or something? Now
23:18
Speaker 1: he was he was from I think of Micronesia, so
23:21
Speaker 1: he they think he got it there, brought it over here,
23:24
Speaker 1: didn't know he had it. Uh, ended up in jail
23:26
Speaker 1: and make sure it's what he's in jail for. Man,
23:29
Speaker 1: But um, not for having leprosy. I know that. Not
23:31
Speaker 1: not in the US, buddy. But they basically said, all right,
23:34
Speaker 1: you're going back to jail. Not nothing to worry about
23:36
Speaker 1: going back to prison. He was like, uh great, Yeah,
23:40
Speaker 1: and I'm sure the prisoners are probably worried because they
23:43
Speaker 1: don't listen to this podcast. Yeah, well some of them do.
23:47
Speaker 1: It's probably working in his advantage. Yeah, like stay away
23:50
Speaker 1: from that guy. Yeah, unless he's sad and lonely, then
23:54
Speaker 1: that's different. So if this kind of got to you
23:58
Speaker 1: and you want to do something World Leprosy Days January,
24:03
Speaker 1: that's right, we're a little early. We're kicking off World
24:05
Speaker 1: Leprosy Day in November. And if you want to know
24:08
Speaker 1: more about leprosy or Handson's disease. You can type either
24:11
Speaker 1: one of those in the search part. How stuff works
24:13
Speaker 1: dot Com will bring up this article. Since I said
24:16
Speaker 1: that it's time for listener mail, I'm gonna call this
24:20
Speaker 1: one hit drummer. Hey, guys, I have no idea how
24:25
Speaker 1: I missed your one Hit Wonder podcast from a while
24:27
Speaker 1: back until now, but it brought back a lot of memories.
24:30
Speaker 1: I was in a band called SR. Seventy one, which
24:32
Speaker 1: you may remember, had a hit called right Now, which
24:35
Speaker 1: reached number two on the Billboard Modern Rock Charts in
24:38
Speaker 1: two thousand and generally inescapable that summer. There are definitely
24:43
Speaker 1: some mixed feelings on the subject, but I'd have to
24:45
Speaker 1: say having had one hit is better than having none.
24:48
Speaker 1: Uh do you know the song? I went and listened.
24:51
Speaker 1: I looked it up, and I did not recognize it.
24:53
Speaker 1: I didn't either, and that's because I don't listen to
24:56
Speaker 1: the radio. Same here, man, and in two thousand, I
24:59
Speaker 1: wasn't listening the radio. Um, but it seemed like a
25:02
Speaker 1: very two thousand sort of song when I heard it.
25:05
Speaker 1: You know, it fit that time period. Oh yeah, and
25:07
Speaker 1: the video too. Yeah. Then the dudes here, I worked
25:10
Speaker 1: on a lot of videos like that at the time, like, uh,
25:14
Speaker 1: it seemed like there was like a lot of street
25:17
Speaker 1: party in and skateboarding and like, uh, you know, a
25:21
Speaker 1: lot of that going. Although I got a brief, small
25:25
Speaker 1: taste of the sweetness that is fame, it was enough
25:27
Speaker 1: to make me realize that what I thought I wanted
25:29
Speaker 1: wasn't very satisfying. The upside was having plenty of stories
25:32
Speaker 1: to tell. Unfortunately. I keep a tour journal containing details
25:35
Speaker 1: that have mostly been lost from memory. Late night TV,
25:38
Speaker 1: daytime talk guest spots on short lived TV shows, uh,
25:41
Speaker 1: several incredible gigs can't forget the forty what Club It Happens?
25:45
Speaker 1: An amazing trip to Japan and one of the strangest
25:48
Speaker 1: experiences ever on German MTV. They make for some great
25:51
Speaker 1: life experiences that helps me see marketing for what it
25:54
Speaker 1: is in all its forms. The major label recording experience
25:57
Speaker 1: and the constant touring were beneficial from a musical standpoint,
26:01
Speaker 1: although playing the same bunch of tunes every night quickly
26:03
Speaker 1: became maddening. And I'm happy to know that I don't
26:06
Speaker 1: want to be on the Merry Go round of or
26:09
Speaker 1: tour bus rolling Petrie dish gross unless I'm the one
26:13
Speaker 1: running the show. Thanks for a great show, Please keep
26:16
Speaker 1: at it. There's so much to know. And that is
26:18
Speaker 1: Dan Garbon and that's when to grow on. Formerly of
26:21
Speaker 1: sr see and Uh, I emailed him see if you
26:24
Speaker 1: care to say what he's doing now? And I didn't
26:26
Speaker 1: hear back from him, but I think he let's make
26:28
Speaker 1: some of the up. Yeah, okay, I think he's still
26:31
Speaker 1: drumming and then like teaching, and um, I think he
26:34
Speaker 1: has a recording studio. I think he's taken like that
26:37
Speaker 1: road instead of the drudgery of the tour bus. Are
26:41
Speaker 1: you making all that up? No? No, no, I think
26:43
Speaker 1: that's real. What is that? Based on his Wikipedia page?
26:46
Speaker 1: Oh okay, I was gonna say, what else would I
26:50
Speaker 1: find it? I don't. I thought you were just making
26:51
Speaker 1: it up and would admit it. No. Thanks a lot, Dan,
26:55
Speaker 1: that's pretty cool man. Um, if you had a one
26:59
Speaker 1: hit wonder, would you have? No, you wouldn't have when
27:02
Speaker 1: you'd be a one hit wonder, right, and your name
27:04
Speaker 1: is not Lue big fake lou Bega. Man, we'd love
27:08
Speaker 1: to hear from you. You can tweet to us at
27:12
Speaker 1: s Y s K podcast or you can say hey
27:14
Speaker 1: on our Facebook page at Facebook dot com, slas Stuff
27:16
Speaker 1: you Should Know, You can send us an email to
27:18
Speaker 1: Stuff Podcast at houseff Worst dot com, and you can
27:21
Speaker 1: just browser awesome free site Stuff you Should Know dot com.
27:30
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, does
27:32
Speaker 1: it How stuff Works dot com