Leprosy’s Scourge
‘The 66 Star’ was America’s only newspaper by and for lepers, published at the national leprosarium in Carville, Louisiana.
Under a pseudonym, editor ‘Stanley Stein’ worked to dispel myths dating back to the Bible that led to the isolation of sufferers from Hansen’s disease.
Hansen’s disease, known in benighted times as leprosy, is not a form of uncleanliness or divine punishment for marrying a Cushite. It was treated with Promin.
The 66 Star — “Radiating the Light of Truth on Hansen’s disease” — was the patient publication of the national leprosarium in Carville, Louisiana, known as United States Public Health Service Marine Hospital 66. The 66 Star ceased publication in 1934 after its founder and publisher, “Stanley Stein,” went blind. Stanley Stein’s real name was Sidney Maurice Levyson. He grew up in the tiny German-American town of Boerne, Texas (pronounced “Bernie”), was educated as a pharmacist, was diagnosed with leprosy at 21, and for years was secretly treated by a San Antonio physician. At the time he contracted his condition, Hansen’s disease, or leprosy, was an incurable, almost entirely untreatable, disfiguring, hideously painful condition in which patients often lingered between life and death for decades. When the doctor treating Levyson in San Antonio died, Levyson’s condition deteriorated. On the advice of his rabbi, he took himself to a leading specialist in tropical diseases in New York …
