As the world grapples with the coronavirus outbreak, “social distancing” has become the buzzword of these abnormal times. And social distancing, the antithesis to human nurturing, has spawned–dare I say it–a repulsive fashion accessory, the face mask, that signals, “Stay away!”
Clothing has long served as a useful way to mitigate close contact and unnecessary exposure during past epidemics such as the bubonic plague, when doctors wore pointed, bird-like masks as a way to keep their distance from sick patients; and social outcasts known as ‘lepers,’ were often forced to wear a heart on their clothes and don bells or wooden clappers to warn people of their approach, because people were so afraid of catching the disease.
The objective was to avoid contact …no touching.
Dacher Keltner, Ph.D., founding director of the Greater Good Science Center and a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley declared, “After years spent immersed in the science of touch, I can tell you that touch is far more profound than we realize.
“In recent years, a wave of studies has documented some incredible emotional and physical health benefits that come from touch. This research is suggesting that touch is truly fundamental to human communication, bonding, and health.
“The science of touch convincingly suggests that we’re wired to connect with other people on a basic physical level. To deny that is to deprive ourselves of some of life’s greatest joys and deepest comforts,” impassioned Keltner.
Let’s transition from the “science of touch” to the “substance of touch.”
I previously referenced the dismembering disease of leprosy, the oldest recorded disease known to humanity and one of the most dreaded. Due to the stigma attached to the disease, many of those afflicted would not seek treatment, resulting in unsightly facial disfigurement, twisted hands and feet with loss of feeling and eventual blindness.
My wife, Renee and I have two connections to leprosy.
One, in 1971, while we were on a concert tour in the Caribbean Islands. We were invited to sing at a morning chapel service at the Oso Blanco prison in Puerto Rico–known as the “Alcatraz of the Caribbean”; a penitentiary with a grisly history.
The fortress-like facade of the Oso Blanco prison looms over a gritty neighborhood in the Puerto Rican capital. As we walked through the huge Art Deco arched entrance of the peeling bone-white structure, we were met by a prison guard who led us to a fetid overcrowded room of inmates.
Before we sang, a Puerto Rican man, whose broad smile belied his beleaguered frame, shared with the disparate group of men a brief history of his life. As a young boy, when he had begun to exhibit the telltale signs of leprosy, his parents were required to take him to the leper asylum built in 1926 next to a church southeast of San Juan. He recounted, “as clearly as if it were happening now,” his parents entering the compound and laying him on a stone slab and walking away. “As I lay on my back, I remember contorting my head to follow them with my eyes until I could see them no more,” he shared.
This realization, as a young boy, that he had been abandoned by his family and no longer belonged, was devastating. The disease, which altered the shape of his face and limbs, was insignificant in comparison to the disfigurement done to his heart. As time passed, he continued, “I came to understand there was someone who would never abandon me, even in my repulsive state.”
He moved a step closer to his captive listeners and began to sing a hymn, “Now I belong to Jesus.” His voice bellowed from within his diminutive frame, both of his arms, with stubs for fingers, stretched upward.
Our second connection to leprosy is through Renee’s Great-Uncle Lucius Badger.
When Renee and I have occasion to travel to the island of Maui, we lodge in Kaanapali, located on the northwest corner of the island overlooking the remotely populated island of Molokai.
On the northern Kalaupapa Peninsula of this outlying island, is a steep path leading to Kalaupapa National Historical Park, an isolated former leper colony set below towering cliffs.
It is here that Lucius Badger sailed in 1935 to research leprosy. He spent a number of years conducting his research. In fact, current interest in leprosy research in the United States is attributed to Badger’s persistence in the 1950s of setting up a Public Health Service Research Committee on Leprosy. When Lucius Badger retired in 1957, he was listed in the International Journal of Leprosy among the “Contributors of the Century.”
I’ll conclude with the story of Dr. Paul Brand and his wife Dr. Margaret Brand.
In the late 1940s, Dr. Paul Brand, a missionary and skilled and inventive hand surgeon, and his helpmate in this life, put their deep faith in practice by serving some of the lowliest people on the planet: members of India’s Untouchable caste, “leprosy beggars,” deformed, crippled and often blinded by the disease, which rendered them complete social outcasts.
It touched Dr. Brand greatly when, unable to speak the local language, he gave a leprosy patient a friendly prod to assure him he would help him as much as he could. Scars and ulcers covered the patient’s hands and face, bearing mute witness to the abuse his body had suffered because his touch cells and pain cells had fallen silent. Mere stubs on his hands marked where fingers used to be. Tears started to stream down the patient’s face and Dr. Brand asked a colleague what he had done to distress him. The colleague replied: “You touched him and no-one has done that for years.“
Dr. Brand expressed the guiding principle of his medical career this way: “The most precious possession any human being has is his spirit, his will to live, his sense of dignity, his personality. Once that has been lost, the opportunity for rehabilitation is lost. Though our profession may be a technical one, concerned with tendons, bones and nerve endings, we must realize that it is the person behind them who is so important.”
As Dr. Paul Brand, confesses in his book, Fearfully and Wonderfully Made:
“I have sometimes wondered why Jesus so frequently touched the people he healed, many of whom must have been unattractive, obviously diseased, unsanitary, smelly. With his power, he easily could have waved a magic wand. In fact, a wand would have reached more people than a touch. He could have divided the crowd into affinity groups and organized his miracles–paralyzed people over there, feverish people here, people with leprosy there–raising his hands to heal each group efficiently, en masse. But he chose not to. Jesus’ mission was not chiefly a crusade against disease, but rather a ministry to individual people, some of whom happened to have a disease. He wanted those people, one by one, to feel his love and warmth and his full identification with them. Jesus knew he could not readily demonstrate love to a crowd, for love usually involves touching.”
“To touch can be to give life,” said Michelangelo, and he was absolutely right.
Former Cook County Commissioner Garry Gamble is writing this ongoing column about the various ways government works, as well as other topics. At times the column is editorial in nature.
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