Leprosy or leprosy. What kind of a disease is this?

How do you imagine a person suffering from such a disease as leprosy? What kind of a disease is this? It is also called leprosy. Few know about it now. Most likely, this is because the disease in our time is not very common. However, to have an idea about it, remember that we will be saved from it, everyone should.

A bit of history

For a long time, leprosy was known to mankind. "What kind of a disease is this?" - the ancient healers wondered. About this disease wrote more Hippocrates. However, he confused him with psoriasis. In medieval times, leprosy became "the plague of the century". Leprosoria began everywhere, where affected people were being treated. As a rule, these ancient medical institutions were located near the monasteries. The patients were encouraged by this terrible disease to live in them. This gave a good preventive effect, it made it possible to restrain the rapid spread of leprosy. In medieval France, even there was such a custom, when a leper was taken to church, where he was put in a coffin and covered with a lid. After that his relatives went to the cemetery, lowered the coffin to the grave and threw a few lumps of earth on top, as if saying goodbye to the "deceased". Then the patient was taken out and taken to the leper colony, where he had to live the rest of his life. People did not know how to treat this disease. And only in 1873 in Norway G. Hansen was discovered the causative agent of leprosy - Mycobacterium leprae. The situation with the treatment immediately changed.

How can I get infected?

Today outbreaks of leprosy are observed mainly in tropical hot countries. I'm glad that the number of patients continues to fall every year. However, in our time there are people who do not know what leprosy is. The disease, photos of those suffering can be seen here, is very contagious. It is transmitted , as a rule, during close contact of people among themselves, as well as through discharge from the mouth and nose.

Manifestations of the disease

Despite the fact that in our country the number of people suffering from the illness we are considering is small, there is still a risk of catching it. Very insidious is leprosy. What kind of disease? How to recognize it? These questions are of interest to many of us. An infected person at first can experience weakness, lethargy, drowsiness. Then he notes that his fingers and toes are numb, there are bumps on the skin. This is the initial stage of leprosy. Then a deep lesion of the skin and soft tissue occurs, ulcers are formed.

How to protect yourself

Speaking about such a disease as leprosy, photo of which is presented here, it is worth mentioning that it has a rather long incubation period - 15-20 years. This means that the causative agent of it can be in your body for many years, and you may not even know it. In order to activate it, you must adhere to certain conditions, for example, such as severe hypothermia, poor nutrition, non-compliance with personal hygiene, secondary infection. Therefore, it is important to strengthen your immunity from childhood and take care of the cleanliness around you. Treatment of the disease is long and requires the recommendations of many specialists. As a rule, antimicrobials are used for this. Haulm-oil is a remedy that the ancient healers used for several centuries.

In this article, we are available to tell you about such a disease as leprosy. What kind of disease is leprosy? How can you protect yourself from it? For all these questions, you now know the answer.