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Social History of Medicine 2002 15(1):89-108; doi:10.1093/shm/15.1.89
© 2002 by Society for the Social History of Medicine
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Building National Medicine: Leprosy and Power in Colombia, 1870–1910

Diana Obregón1

1 Department of History, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Edificio Manuel Ancízar, Bogotá DC, Colombia. E-mail: dobregon{at}colomsat.net.co

As imperialist nations rediscovered leprosy in their colonial world in the late nineteenth century, Colombian physicians found endemic leprosy in their own country. The medical community was interested in constructing a national medicine to conform to ‘universal’ science. To medicalize leprosy, doctors provoked fears through exaggerating the number of leprosy sufferers to demonstrate that charity was incapable of dealing with the problem. The government approved laws of compulsory segregation of leprosy patients in the 1890s, while the 1897 international conference on leprosy held in Berlin gave international sanction to isolation. Lepers actively resisted segregation as a violation of their individual rights. Dr Juan de Dios Carrasquilla studied the disease, experimented with serotherapy to cure it, and claimed that the flea was its agent of transmission. He combatted segregation and proposed instead a hygienic programme to improve environmental living conditions, but his approach was defeated. When the early twentieth century saw the consolidation of the Colombian state, modernization of the country became a national priority. The government started to take control of lazarettos, enforcing segregation of lepers, who were confined within an area circumscribed by a sanitary cordon. This strategy was a failure, since patients resisted segregation.

Keywords: leprosy; Colombia; lazarettos; patients; national medicine; medical history; bacteriology; serotherapy; nineteenth century; early twentieth century


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