Leprosy in New Brunswick, 1844-1910: a reconsideration

In 1844, New Brunswickers found a distrubing new element in their midst--leprosy. For the next half century, they struggled to comprehend and control this seemingly dangerous entity. This thesis reconstructs the attitudes of the medical profession, public and lepers towards the disease, recreates the drama of personalities, politics and prejudices, and traces the evolution of the province's primary defence against the disease, from the rude quarantine sheds on Sheldrake Island to the three-storey lazaretto constructed at Tracadie in 1896. It is clear that the existence of leprosy in northeastern New Brunswick did not elicit a single and static response. With its distinctive medical pathology, folklore, biblical charisma and melodramatic imagery, the disease perplexed New Brunswickers. As a consequence, the response to the disease was complex, encompassing such extremes as ambivalence, fascination and revulsion. Among the province's medical profession the disease ignited an ideological debate over the merits of hereditarian and contagionist theory. In some people, the disease awakened latent fears and fortified ethnic stereotypes, fostering the assumption that leprosy was culture-specific to the Acadians. In others, it awakened morbid curiosity. For a small segment of the population, the disease held out the opportunity for self-sacrifice and Christian service. In the Acadian regions of Gloucester county, public response to the disease had a singular complexion, as local residents viewed the disease and the diseased as an extension of themselves. Kinship loyalties and a shared aversion to the custodial brutality of Sheldrake Island overrode leprophobic impulses, exciting sympathy for the lepers. This accommodative posture continued until the 1880s, when the French-speaking communities, mobilized by Dr. A. C. Smith, began to assist in the identification and incarceration of suspected lepers. For the lepers of 19th century-New Brunswick, the disease presented a particularly painful dilemma. It consumed not only their bodies but their lives and burdened them with the stigma of dishonour and incurability. Added to these indignities were the inconsistencies of public opinion, as cruelly capricious as the disease itself. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)