By comparing institutions in Hawai'i and Louisiana designed to
incarcerate individuals with a highly stigmatized disease, Colonizing
Leprosy provides an innovative study of the complex relationship
between U.S. imperialism and public health policy in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries. Focusing on the Kalaupapa Settlement in
Moloka'i and the U.S. National Leprosarium in Carville, Michelle Moran
shows not only how public health policy emerged as a tool of empire in
America's colonies, but also how imperial ideologies and racial
attitudes shaped practices at home.
Although medical personnel at both sites considered leprosy a colonial
disease requiring strict isolation, Moran demonstrates that they adapted
regulations developed at one site for use at the other by changing rules
to conform to ideas of how "natives" and "Americans" should be treated.
By analyzing administrators' decisions, physicians' treatments, and
patients' protests, Moran examines the roles that gender, race,
ethnicity, and sexuality played in shaping both public opinion and
health policy. Colonizing Leprosy makes an important contribution to
an understanding of how imperial imperatives, public health practices,
and patient activism informed debates over the constitution and health
of American bodies.