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Unsettling and tragic, Tayman uncovers the history of the exiles of Molokai

John Tayman’s The Colony recounts the history of the exiles of Molokai -- people castaway to a remote shore in the Hawaiian islands after they became stricken with the staggeringly painful and destructive disease of leprosy. The text is meticulously researched, beginning with the founding of the colony in 1866, and then covering more than 150 years as the book traces the fate of the community and its residents into the early years of the 21st century. Staggering in terms of time and the terrible neglect that sickened individuals suffered generation after generation, The Colony is heart-wrenching and tragic -- but it also conveys a sense of enduring determination by those affected by the disease to stubbornly develop a community despite abandonment and isolation and to live with basic human dignities.

Tayman is adept not just at conveying facts, but personalities, paying particular attention to persons who loom large over the colony’s history, such as caregivers Father Damien de Veuster and Mother Marianne Cope. And, while I am partial to the more historical elements of the book, as the narrative enters modern times, Tayman is able to shift from secondary sources to first person interviews with a handful of the surviving members of the Molokai colony. It is here that the emotional impact of this practiced ostracism punches the reader as heavy as a fist. Leprosy, for example, not only disfigures and maims, but it also causes blindness, the drugs used to treat the disease may lead to deafness, and the skin becomes insensitive and unfeeling. Tayman describes the last days of Stanley Stein, once a smart and influential newspaper publisher:

“A visit to see Stanley during the last months of his life was nearly unbearable,� Dr. Brand wrote. “Unable to see, unable to hear, unable to feel, he would wake up disorientated. He would stretch out his hand and not know what he was touching, and speak without knowing whether anyone heard or answered. Once I found him sitting in a chair muttering to himself in monotone, ‘I don’t know where I am. Is someone in the room with me? I don’t know who you are, and my thoughts go round and round. I cannot think new thoughts.’�

Just as poignant, but in a very different way, is the remarks of Olivia Breitha, exiled to the Molokai colony as a young girl, and forcibly isolated from touching her "healthy" family and friends. Olivia eventually receives treatments for her disease, which goes into remission, and she is able to travel. Visiting the great redwoods of California she reaches out her hand to stroke one of the majestic tree's dark, wrinkled, ageless skin. Taymon recounts, “She spoke to the tree softly. ‘Remember.� Olivia whispered, ‘I’ve touched you.’�

I’ve added this book to my disaster bookshelf, and it’s worth a look by anyone in the emergency management or public health fields. While leprosy may now be treatable, it offers a potentially unsettling precedent for future epidemics. Fear and lack of understanding are powerful policy agents, and it is not inconceivable that the outbreak of a new contagion would provoke a similar reaction even in today's (supposedly) more enlightened world.

Taymon’s chapter (entitled Civic Duty) on John Early is worth reading. Diagnosed with leprosy (and at one point walled into his home by authorities to ostensibly prevent the spread of the disease), Early was confined to a poorly funded and maintained leper colony in Louisiana � from which he promptly escaped � many times. Early toured the country, road subways in New York City, took in Broadway shows, and crashed Congressional committee meetings in Washington, DC to draw attention to the plight of lepers and the poorly funded institution in Louisiana. As he told the story of his travels to reporters and legislators, he also promptly created a bit of a public panic as he (at least in the public’s mind) spread the leprosy bacterium willy-nilly across the country. Of course, in this case, the reality was that leprosy is far from easily transmitted � but the implication for emergency managers is quite troubling. Might not a single person, contaminated with a similarly suspect pathogen, employ a similar methodology and cause if not a public health emergency, a national panic? And if that were to happen, would we react any better (and more humanely) than the public health officials of a century-and-a-half ago?