National Hansen's Disease Museum

The National Hansen's Disease Museum is a historical museum in Carville, Louisiana.^[1]

History

Located among the oaks on the banks of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans in Carville, Louisiana is the only national leprosy hospital throughout the entire United States. An abandoned sugar plantation, once named Indian Camp, a reference to its earlier use as a Houma Indian hunting and fishing ground, becomes the Louisiana Leper Home. In 1894 patients, doctors and nurses lived, worked and made medical history as they promoted understanding, identification, and treatment of Leprosy, also known as Hansen's disease. Many patients entered the gates they would never pass through again only to leave over one hundred years of artifacts and memories of their lives there.

What began with five men and two women with the disease being brought to the Louisiana Leper Home in the 1800s would grow into hundreds of employees and patients, including married couples and children. Louisiana Leper Home, was known as "a place of refuge, not reproach; a place of treatment and research, not detention." It offered hope to the patients, as well as a comfortable refuge from society.

Through the years, the name would change; in 1921 the U.S. Public Health Service took control and the "Home" became U.S. Marine Hospital Number 66 the National Leprosarium of the United States. So much history was made here. The Star, a world renowned, international publication was started by patient Stanley Stein, known as "Carville's Crusader" as a two page newsletter; patients wrote books, many famous doctors and nurses would make medical history and the hospital grew with over two miles of covered walkways.

In 1986, the facility became known as the Gillis W. Long Hansen’s Disease (Leprosy) Center, named after the distinguished United States Congressman. He was a good friend and associate of people living and working with Hansen's disease.

The National Hansen’s Disease (Leprosy) Museum was founded in 1996 having been declared historical and the U.S. Congress passed a bill to relocate the Gillis W. Long Hansen’s Disease (Leprosy) Center to Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

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