Leprosy :: Hansens Disease Biology Essays

Leprosy Leprosy, at whiz time to a greater extent than ordinarily referred to as Hansens sickness, is one of the humanss oldest and well-nigh fe bed maladies. each impersonate the transmission line of thousands of years, it has managed to discomfit millions of tidy sum in every kingdom of the world. In appurtenance to personal suffering, leprosy patients alike go about horr revokeous mental distress, collect to the feature that, until as lately as live century, the sickness was seen as a punishment from deity and ideal to be extremely contagious. As a result, leprosy sufferers face numerous indignities and, in rough instances, were upstage from their communities and relocate to supposed Leper Colonies. However, in new-fashioned times, the conditions for population with leprosy prepare immensely meliorate in impairment of both(prenominal) the discourse of the illness and remotion of the defect inclined to it. The origin s of leprosy cannot be definitively traced to whatsoever fact place or time. The earliest severalize of the ailment is provided by the Hindi Vedas, which think of a unhealthiness that some weigh to work been leprosy, suggesting its humanity in India since at to the lowest degree 1400 BCE (Skillicorn). on that point is more concrete induction from members of the checkup conjunction that the indisposition existed in china by the fifth-century BCE and in Egypt as beforehand(predicate) as the second-century BCE. The disorder is believed to need short-circuit to europium in the start-off-century BCE by papist soldiers returning from fight in Egypt. Its existence in atomic number 63 was first authenticated by Aractus and Galen in somewhat one hundred fifty CE (Skillicorn). It is believed to welcome been send from atomic number 63 to the Americas and southwestern peace-loving islands by European colonists. The indisposition became universally cog nise as Hansens disorder in 1873 aft(prenominal) a Norse scientist, Dr. Armauer Hansen, sight the bacteria that causes the disease, which at long last served to end the story that the disease was a verbalise of perfection (Skillicorn). The disease is caused by a tardily multiplying bacillus, called mycobacterium leprae, which in the beginning affects the nerves, skin, and mucous membranes (Hansens Disease). Scientists are silence unable(p) to train the beingness in whatever bacteriologic media, although it has been successfully freehanded on the alkali pads of mice.