Chaulmoogra (Hydnocarpus anthelmintica)
FLACOURTIACEAE, Flacourt Family
Leprosy is a dreaded, insidious, loathsome disease that is caused by a bacterium, Mycobacterium leprae, which produces a skin and nerve disease that can, if unchecked, lead to permanent disfigurement. The bacterium, which was only discovered in 1874 by a Norwegian physician, Gerhard Hansen, closely resembles the tuberculosis bacillus. There are today about five million known cases of leprosy worldwide (may be over ten million), occurring mostly within the tropical and subtropical climates. If untreated, the disease progresses in the following ways: (1) lack of skin sensitivity to pain; (2) the skin takes on a porcelain-like whiteness; (3) the skin becomes mottled with color; (4) the eyebrows fall off, nasal ulcers develop, and there is facial deformity; and under severe conditions (5) extremities may fall off. Transmission of this disease is only by contact, so that victims are quickly isolated to avoid infection of others.
Leprosy was considered an incurable disease 2500 years ago, when it appeared in the Nile Valley. There was an epidemic of leprosy in Europe from 1000 to 1200 A.D., which was probably started by the returning soldiers of the Crusades. Leprosy occurred in Britain from 625 to 1798, and at one time there were 326 lazar houses (leprosaria) in Great Britain. As housing conditions improved, leprosy declined sharply. Very few cases of leprosy are reported now in highly developed societies. About 100 leprosy cases are diagnosed each year in the United States, and most of these are imported with immigrants from Asia. One famous story about leprosy was written about by Robert Louis Stevenson, Island of the Living Dead. This was a story about Father Damien, a Belgian, who went to a leper colony on Molokai in 1863 and worked there until he died of leprosy in 1889. There is a leprosarium in Carville, Louisiana.
Practically every drug has been tried as a cure for leprosy, and most are totally useless. There were folklores about cures for leprosy from eastern Asia. Credit apparently goes to a British surgeon in India named Mouat, who in 1854 used a substance called chaulmoogra oil for leprosy treatment. Chaulmoogra oil came from somewhere in the jungles of southeastern Asia. A plant explorer, Joseph Rock, went to eastern Asia to find this plant in the wild and collect seeds for cultivation. Rock eventually found this plant in Burma, a tree called Hydnocarpus. Seeds were sent to the Philippines, but Rock remained in Asia collecting plants, until he was kicked out by the Chinese communists. Chaulmoogra oil and its derivatives became the first cure for young cases (3-5 years) when injected intravenously, and a useful way to halt further injury in older cases. Chaulmoogra oil was replaced by sulphone drugs, which were more effective but had some negative side effects, and now the medicines used most frequently are dapsone (Avlosulfon), Lamprene, or Rifamycin. There has been an alarming increase in resistance to treatment by dapsone.