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The Life and Legacy ofPAUL BRAND

BY APRIL ROSE FALE

If asked what makes this slight, fragile, stiff-postured man a great man, one

can easily choose which of Paul Brands credentials to drop. Brand was legendary in

the medical world. A celebrated surgeon, he received the prestigious Albert Lasker

Award, was appointed by Queen Elizabeth II as Commander of the Order of the British

Empire, and was selected as the only Westerner to serve in the Mahatma Gandhi

Foundation. Hand surgery procedures were named in his honor while he was still

alive. There is little doubt, however, that if Brand himself was asked of his greatest

accomplishment, these things would be mere footnotes to that life mission that

ranked him among the greatest philantropists. Paul Brand devoted his life to battling

the worlds oldest and most feared disease: leprosy.

Paul Brand achieved fame in the medical world primarily through his

pioneering research on leprosy, a disease that has plagued man before the time

people actually considered that the world may not be flat. Indeed the most feared

among diseases, its victims are also among the most discriminated. Following an

infection by the leprosy bacilli, victims can develop facial disfigurement, blindness and

loss of limbs. These horrific deformities incite fear in people who respond with abuse,maltreatment and discrimination. Even in biblical times, people with leprosy had to

shout Unclean! when passing through a public place. In India, some families literally

kick out (with their shoes on) family members with leprosy and leave them out in the

streets to lead a beggars life.

Paul Brand responded to leprosy in a different way, foregoing tempting offers

in the medical world in order to serve in the National Hansens Disease and Hospita l

Research Center, the lone leprosarium in the continental United States. With the help

of his ophthalmologist wife, he developed surgical procedures that helped ease the

symptoms of leprosy.

One primary problem of leprosy victims was the loss of the ability to feel pain.A leprosy patient can step on a rusted nail, walk on as if nothing happened and die

from infection. Because leprosy patients cannot feel their eyes going dry, the eyelids

fail to blink reflexively, eventually causing blindness. In response, Brand and his wife

tunneled a chewing muscle from under the cheek and attached it to the upper eyelid.

By making his patients chew gum all day long, he simultaneously moved his eyelids up

and down, averting dryness, and ultimately, blindness. Brand would often be found

working feverishly on armadillos, the only nonhuman specie known to harbor the

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leprosy bacilli. He experimented with the patients rigid, clawed hands and tried to

find the best way to restore as much movement as possible. Knowing his patients

need for companionship (some of whom have not been touch by another human

being because of fear), Brand would set aside his Sundays, gather the patients into a

chapel of sorts, and, being a Christian, preach inspiration and gratitude. He helped

boost his patients esteem by replacing lost eyebrows with a section of the scalp.

Patients proudly grew their new hair-eyebrows to enormous lengths.

Surrounded by disease and despair among patients, one would think Brand

would question the friendliness of the universe or the sense of life. But if there is one

thing that characterized Paul Brand, it was his bedrock sense of gratitude. He refused

to rave against disease-causing bacteria like the leprosy bacilli; he was instead

thankful that only a few slightly mutated strains out of 24,000 species cause disease.

He refused to mourn the existence of congenital disease; he was instead thankful that

even though forming a single healthy baby was an unbelievably complex, mistake-

prone process, millions of babies are born normally without congenital diseases. He

refused to lament the existence of pain; instead he was thankful for that anatomical

alarm bell that tell us somethings wrong, even trying to recreate the same painsystem for his leprosy patients who lose limbs and go blind because they could not

feel pain.

This is Paul Brands greatest work: revolutionary steps, not only in leprosy

research, but also in the humane treatment of its victims. He was offered to head

major medical centers in England and the United States, but he chose a cubicle of an

office with an ancient air-conditioning unit that sounds like a motorcycle, sitting on a

remote, humid facility somewhere in New Orleans. I am certain, though, that as he

watched his patients blinking and chewing gum or laughing at each others long, bushy

eyebrows, he knew it was a decision he will never regret for the rest of his life.

On October 22, 2008, this was submitted as an essay to Dr. Douglas Larche, Professor of

Communication and Playwright-in-Residence at the University of the Virgin Islands.