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    A Family Secret Inspired A New Book About Leprosy

    NPR correspondent Pam Fessler, author of Carville's Cure: Leprosy, Stigma, and the Fight for Justice, talks about her research into this once feared disease — and its connection to COVID-19.
    by Diane Cole Jul 16, 2020 4 minutes
    Morris Koll, grandfather of NPR correspondent Pam Fessler's husband, enlisted in the U.S. Army and was sent to the Philippines in 1902. That's when he contracted leprosy. In 1935, public health authorities took him to the national leprosarium in Carville, Louisiana. Right: A treatment room at the facility is depicted on the cover of Fessler's new book, <em>Carville's Cure.</em>

    In 1998, NPR correspondent Pam Fessler learned a family secret that had been covered up for 63 years: Her husband's grandfather had leprosy. Her father-in-law revealed that he had returned from school one day to discover that his dad had simply disappeared, taken by public health authorities from their home in New York to the national leprosarium of the United States in Carville, Louisiana. He was confined there for the rest of his life.

    Astounded, Fessler began digging into one of the most dreaded diseases in history.

    Back when Koll's father was whisked away in 1935, many people believed — incorrectly — that leprosy meant

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