Leprosorium

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Spinalonga off Crete , one of the last leper colonies in Europe until 1957

In a Leprosorium ( Leprosenhaus , latin domus leprosorum ), a shape of the sick house, or in a leprosy colony , were obtained from antiquity to the modern era of leprosy , also called "leprosy" (which other abnormal skin diseases were described), sufferers from the rest isolated from the population in order to prevent the disease from spreading in the absence of effective drugs.

History of the Leprosoria

From ancient times to the present there have been various forms of isolation ( isolation , quarantine , "exposure" , segregation, sequestration, hospitalization, internment , asylum , exile , marginalization ) of lepers, i. H. from those who are considered contagious (up to the present day also from those who have been healed). The development of leprosories (also known as “Gutleuthäuser”) was often preceded by so-called Feldsiechentum , in which those suffering from leprosy (also called field disease in the Middle Ages ) (also known as Gutleut ) were merely “exposed” and in contrast to closed ones, for example in a domus leprosorum and care for lepers received at best individual care.

Orient

The Melaten estate at the gates of Aachen is an example of a leprosarium that was used as an infirmary

A separation of the sick, possibly already practiced in ancient Mesopotamia, is biblically documented in early Judaism (and later also in the Talmud ). The Old Testament laws of purity in the book of Leviticus (3rd book of Moses) describe how someone who is declared unclean by God will behave ( Lev 13.45-46  EU ): “The leper [...] should wear torn clothes and his head uncombed to let; he should cover his beard and exclaim: Unclean! Unclean! [...] He should live in isolation, outside the camp he should stay. ”The resulting belief in the guilt of the sick played a role in certain measures in later Christian countries. “Leprosy” is a translation of the Hebrew Ṣaarʿat , which hardly meant leprosy but rather less serious skin diseases. The probably wrong Latin translation leprosy comes from the Vulgate of Jerome (church father) . In antiquity, for example among the Hippocrats , “leprosy” (from Greek lépra “dandruff”) meant a scaly rash like psoriasis or other scaly dermatoses .

Further early evidence for the exile of people suffering from leprosy or the like to isolated places comes from the Chinese Empire in the 3rd century BC. The sick ( ming disease or li disease) were mostly banished to the mountains, where they lived in caves or huts on the edge of the settlement areas as field caves without contact to family or village community. Later, however, the sick were usually no longer expelled from their (Confucian) community, but rather - in order to avoid being ostracized and to remain connected for marriage - hidden within the extended family. A model of the leprosarium designed by Buddhist monks in the 6th century AD, as it was known from India, had, however, gained no meaning for the expelled sick. Up until the 19th century, leprosy or illnesses believed to be infected in India were given little care; rather, they continued to be cast out from their family members, lived on the outskirts, and fed on begging. From the beginning of the 19th century, the lepers began to be asylumed (for example on behalf of the Baptist Missionary Society by William Carey in Calcutta).

In Byzantium, lepers (Greek lelōbēménoi ) were asylumed since the 4th century and looked after in special facilities. From the leprosy departments such institutions of the Byzantine hospital system Sebaste went to Konstantin Opel, near Kaisarea (where Basil Creating the hospital complex is a leprosy hospital was), Nicaea, Edessa, Antioch and Jerusalem independent leprosoria forth. There were three such leprosy institutions in Constantinople. From Byzantium, Leprosorium found imitators in the West, in the Arab and Islamic cultures and mediated by Buddhism in China. Asylums of this type established in the Ottoman Empire have existed to the present day (Miskinler Tekkesi, Üsküdar / Skutari).

The leprosoria developed in the Islamic culture in the Middle Ages from the ancient Byzantine models built on the one hand on existing facilities, on the other hand they were newly created. These leprosoria were secured by an endowment or foundation. For example, as part of the first hospital building in Damascus in 707, Caliph al-Walid I had a department set up to separate the leprosy. From the 17th century onwards, most of these facilities fell into disrepair and there was an accumulation of leprosy in the vicinity of city gates or city walls. The lepers (from Old High German ûz-sâzeo ) were referred to in Arabic as al-hara ("outside the cities").

Occident

The Sankt-Georg-Hospital in Eberswalde was first mentioned in 1359 and served as a leprosy. The building was surrounded by a plague cemetery . The hospital chapel was probably built in the middle of the 14th century.

The first leprosoria in Europe arose on French and German soil. In 347 leprosy reached Arlon . Since 460 there have been special hospitals in Europe that followed the spread of leprosy. In 583 a bishop advised Council wished in Lyon to set up leprosoria. It followed (like the Imperial Synod of Compiègne 757, for example with the permission of divorce in the event of illness of a spouse) with the requirements of Langobard law (as it is formulated in Edictum Rothari of 643, which requires a judicial determination of the diagnosis before expulsion and the expelled Lepers as “dead, as it were”) and also a proposal of the council of 549 in Orléans. These houses were intended to isolate lepers and live outside of monasteries and cities . Despite the medically meaningful isolation, the lepers were no longer completely socially excluded. The findings to be collected at the “Lepraschau” were made by a priest, and from the middle of the 14th century also a doctor, who then admitted the sick to the leprosoria (The oldest German-language leprosy certificate was written in Cologne in 1357. In it, three doctors spoke of suspected leprosy the leprosy show free). A thorough sequestration of leprosy sufferers did not take place in the Middle Ages, but also a rehabilitation as propagated by the order of the Lazarites founded at the beginning of the 12th century (with which the origin of the word " hospital " is related) was only an exception. The oldest leprosories in Western and Central Europe emerged in German-speaking countries since the 7th / 8th centuries. Century in Metz , Verdun and Maastricht and from 720 in St. Gallen , in the 12th century in Cologne, Gent, Brussels and Passau.

In 789, Charlemagne renewed King Rothari's edict and ordered the isolation of lepers ("[...] ut se non intermisceant alio populo"). In 1179, the Third Lateran Council passed a charitable law on the sick, falling under the jurisdiction of the Church, which was concerned with segregation, marriage and livelihood security for the lepers. It was also decided that leprosories should be allowed to build their own chapels or church rooms and have their own priests, as long as they do not affect other parishes. The lepers were to be buried in separate cemeteries. They were also exempt from tithing . Until then, the leprosoria in the Holy Roman Empire had been limited to the episcopal cities in the west. Lepers in other areas had been left to their own devices. The decision of the Lateran Council laid the basis for the establishment of the leper system. However, moving to the leper house was also associated with a legal “for-dead declaration” (the leper was tamquam mortuus , “equally dead”, still excluded from the community). With the flourishing of cities in the 12th century and in general Population growth up to the 13th century, the number of lepers increased (in the 13th century a leprosy opened in Aachen and around 1300 the diocese of Würzburg already had seven " leper houses "). In addition, the narrowness of the cities and the often poor hygienic conditions encouraged the spread of infectious diseases. The leprosoria were often in the "disease free" time to hospitals converted and served the poorer classes as hospice .

The care of the sick was primarily the responsibility of the church, which provided food and clothing for the sick. In order for the sick to be recognized as such, they had to wear special clothing, often horns, bells or (as was still prescribed in a Würzburg begging order from 1490) rattling ("Lazarus clatter").

Since the leprosy houses were dependent on alms, they were outside the city walls, but mostly on main roads or pilgrimage routes, so that the sick, whose only source of income was the charity of their fellow citizens, had better opportunities to beg .

Leprosoria belonged to the "sick houses". Siech meant 'sick', 'sick' or 'leper' in Middle High German , so it had a very general meaning, but was partly replaced by the word “sick” in Late Middle High German . Infirmary was a generic term for epidemic hospitals (as opposed to the general hospital remote), and as a special infirmary for leprosoria and the plague houses that emerged in the late 14th century . The leprosoria were mostly on major arterial roads, while the plague houses were completely isolated.

Dante Alighieri refers to expelled lepers in the Chiana Valley in his Divine Comedy (“From Valdichiana's full hospitals”).

In Norway, after the doctor Armauer Hansen , who worked in the St. Jörgen Care Foundation in Bergen , discovered the leprosy pathogen as the cause in 1874, it was decided in 1877 to isolate wandering leprosy beggars and in 1885 a strict isolation of all lepers was carried out. After a few decades, the number of lepers fell significantly, including in the particularly affected mountains.

Sanatoriums for leprosy sufferers in Europe were the Sanatorio San Francisco de Borja in Spain and the clinic in Tichileşti on the edge of the Danube Delta in Romania with 19 residents in 2011.

Leper colonies outside of Europe

Molokaʻi (Hawaii) coast with a view of the leper colony

In the 16th century, leprosy began to subside in the Occident. However, starting from the Iberian Peninsula, which was still severely affected, the leprosy was carried off to the New World, to Central and South America. In 1543, a Spaniard fell ill with leprosy in Colombia. Soon afterwards, Fernando Cortez established Mexico's first leprosy hospital. After the Thirty Years' War, with a few exceptions, leprosy disappeared in northern European countries.

Leprosoria now often emerged in an even more isolated location than before, for example on islands such as Molokaʻi , where the leprosy Hawaiis were banished from 1865 (in 1873, on the gate to the Leprosorium Molokaʻis, “Let all hope go!” From Dante's Inferno ). There was no leprosy in Hawaii until 1859, but by 1882 every thirtieth inhabitant was infected with leprosy ( Hawaiian ma'i pake , "Chinese disease").

The causative bacterium was not discovered until 1873. As part of the colonization that began in the 16th century, mission orders and mission societies looked after lepers in the colonies , where "leper colonies " were also established. The first international leprosy conference took place in Berlin in 1897 and also made use of their experiences.

More leprosoria in Germany

Kitchen of the Leper House in Bad Wurzach

The Nikolaikapelle outside the stone gate in front of Hanover served as a leprosy chapel for the Nikolai-Stift , which was probably donated by the city council before 1259 . The St. Jost leprosy in Trier was first mentioned in a document in 1283. This "leper colony" had its own cemetery called the Leper Cemetery . The leper house in Bad Wurzach was first mentioned in a document in 1355. Leprosoria were often St. George's hospitals . The Georgenhospital in Elbing, Prussia, operated both a department for the mentally ill ("Dollhaus zu Sankt Georgen", around 1396) and a leprosy house. Where St. George's chapels or St. Jürgen courtyards are in old towns, leprosy homes were often used in northern Germany. In front of the gates of Münster on the old trade route from Münster to Friesland, there was a home for lepers, called kinderen hus ('children's house'). Today that is the name of a district of Münster. The existence of the home has been documented since 1586. Today the only leprosy museum in Germany commemorates this leprosy as well as the history and the fight against leprosy. The Siechhof of Eichstatt considered the only completely preserved late medieval system of a leprosarium.

There was also a leprosarium in Essen , Rüttenscheid district ; the infirmary chapel built in the 15th century can still be visited here today. The leprosy house in Kaufbeuren now serves as a nursing home.

Around 1700 there were hardly any real cases of leprosy in German-speaking countries. Leprosoria were pretending to be lepers (for example with forged sickness certificates), and were used by vagabonds and criminals as a shelter. Elector Johann Wilhelm von Jülich took this as an opportunity to destroy the leprosy houses of Jülich and Berg. The last of these leprosy homes was destroyed in 1716 (this date can be seen as the extinction of leprosy in West Germany).

Between 1986 and 2006, the historian Jürgen Belker-van den Heuvel published overviews of around 1000 verifiable leprosoria in Germany in the journal Die Klapper .

List of (preserved) leprosories

See also

literature

  • Gundolf Keil : Leprosy (leprosy, Hansen's disease). In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil, Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , pp. 841-844.
  • Gundolf Keil: Plagues of the Middle Ages. In: Bernd Herrmann (Ed.): Man and the environment in the Middle Ages. Frankfurt am Main 1986; 4th edition ibid 1989 (= Fischer Taschenbuch. Volume 4192), pp. 109–128, here: pp. 109–113.
  • Arslan Terzioğlu: Islamic Leprosoria in the Middle Ages. In: Gundolf Keil, Peter Assion, Willem Frans Daems, Heinz-Ulrich Röhl (eds.): Specialized prose studies. Contributions to medieval science and intellectual history. (Festschrift Gerhard Eis) E. Schmidt, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-503-01269-9 , pp. 305-312.
  • Stefan Winkle : Cultural history of epidemics. Artemis & Winkler, Düsseldorf / Zurich 1997; Licensed edition for Komet, Frechen, ISBN 3-933366-54-2 , pp. 1–46.

Web links

Commons : Leper Colonies  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files
Wiktionary: Leprosenhaus  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Stefan Winkle: Cultural history of epidemics. 1997.
  2. ↑ Karl Wurm, AM Walter: Infectious Diseases. In: Ludwig Heilmeyer (ed.): Textbook of internal medicine. Springer-Verlag, Berlin / Göttingen / Heidelberg 1955; 2nd edition, ibid. 1961, pp. 9-223, here: p. 221.
  3. ↑ a b c d e Gundolf Keil: Plagues of the Middle Ages. In: Bernd Herrmann (Ed.): Man and the environment in the Middle Ages. Frankfurt am Main 1986; 4th edition ibid. 1989 (= Fischer Taschenbuch. Volume 4192), pp. 109–128.
  4. ↑ F. Köcher: On the question of leprosy in the old Mesopotamia. In: Jörn Henning Wolf (ed.): Leprosy, leprosy, Hansen's disease. A changing human problem. (=  Catalogs of the German Museum of Medical History. Supplement. 1). 2 volumes. Volume 2, Ingolstadt 1986.
  5. ^ H. Niedermeier: Social and legal treatment of the lepers. In: Jörn Henning Wolf (ed.): Leprosy, leprosy, Hansen's disease. A changing human problem. (=  Catalogs of the German Museum of Medical History. Supplement. 1). 2 volumes. Volume 1, Ingolstadt 1982, pp. 76-85, here: p. 76.
  6. ^ Antje Schelberg: Lepers in the medieval society. (PDF; 2.6 MB). Dissertation. 2001.
  7. ↑ a b c d e f g Gundolf Keil: Leprosy (leprosy, Hansen's disease). 2005.
  8. ↑ See also E. Kahle: Dermatology in the Old Testament. In: Reports of the physical-medical society Würzburg. Volume 88, 1984, pp. 187-194.
  9. ↑ Marcus Cante: Barnim district. City of Eberswalde . Ed .: Brandenburg State Office for Monument Preservation on behalf of the Ministry of Science, Research and Culture of the State of Brandenburg (=  Monument Topography Federal Republic of Germany . Monuments in Brandenburg . Volume 5.1 ). 1st edition. Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft, Worms 1997, ISBN 3-88462-136-X , Nordend district. Breite Strasse (formerly Stettiner Strasse). Hospital Chapel St. Georg, S. 146-149 .
  10. ↑ Medieval leper houses in today's Brandenburg and Berlin. (No longer available online.) In: Leprosy Museum Münster-Kinderhaus. Society for Leprosy V., archived from the original on October 11, 2016 ; accessed on March 6, 2017 .
  11. ^ III Lateran Council. Canon 23. In: IntraText digital library. Retrieved October 19, 2012 .
  12. ↑ Klaus Bergdolt : The Meditatio Mortis as medicine. Reflections on the ethics of fear of death in the late Middle Ages and today. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 9, 1991, pp. 249-258, here: p. 251.
  13. ↑ Kathrin Apel: Caritas and memoria. The hospital system of the city of Kassel in the late Middle Ages. (PDF; 443 kB) 2006, p. 43 , accessed on October 19, 2012 .
  14. ↑ Stefanie Moser: The Waidhofen an der Ybbs Hospital in the early modern period. (PDF; 901 kB) Reconstruction of everyday hospital life based on account books. P. 12 , accessed October 19, 2012 .
  15. ^ Peter Kolb: The hospital and health system. In: Ulrich Wagner (Hrsg.): History of the city of Würzburg. 4 volumes, Volume 1: From the beginnings to the outbreak of the Peasants' War. 2001, ISBN 3-8062-1465-4 , pp. 386-409 and 647-653, here: p. 402.
  16. ^ Matthias Lexer: Middle High German Concise Dictionary . 34th edition. S. Hirzel, Leipzig 1974, ISBN 3-7776-0269-8 , pp. 193 .
  17. ↑ The dictionary of origin . Etymology of the German language. In: Duden in 10 volumes . 2nd Edition. tape 7 . Bibliographisches Institut, Mannheim 1989, ISBN 3-411-00907-1 , p. 643 .
  18. ^ Dieter Jetter: The European Hospital from Late Antiquity to 1800. Cologne 1986; 2nd edition, ibid. 1987.
  19. ^ Friedrich Bernward Fahlbusch : Infirmary . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 7, LexMA-Verlag, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-7608-8907-7 , Sp. 1844.
  20. ↑ The Last Leprosarium in Europe ( Memento from January 12, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) from September 12, 2011, accessed on June 29, 2015.
  21. ↑ maʻi in Hawaiian Dictionaries ; pākē in Hawaiian Dictionaries
  22. ↑ Ulrike Wagner: 75 years of Qui Hoa. From the leper colony to the specialist clinic. In: Pharmaceutical newspaper. Volume 46, November 9, 2004.
  23. ^ Rainer Kasties: Nikolai-Stift. In: Stadtlexikon Hannover . P. 477.
  24. ↑ Karl Wurm, AM Walter: Infectious Diseases. In: Ludwig Heilmeyer (ed.): Textbook of internal medicine. Springer-Verlag, Berlin / Göttingen / Heidelberg 1955; 2nd edition, ibid. 1961, pp. 9-223, here: p. 221.
  25. ↑ Mario Horst Lanczik, Gundolf Keil: On the history of the psychiatric hospital system in West and East Prussia. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 10, 1992, pp. 29-37, here: p. 30.
  26. ↑ see Leprosoria in Germany accessed January 12, 2020; the data has been supplemented since 2017.