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Fri, May 23 2025 25 Iyyar 5785

Sunday, June 8, 2025 • 12 Sivan 5785

10:30 AM - 12:15 PM

Notable Book of the Year in 2021 by the American Library Association

Following the trail of an unexpected family connection, acclaimed journalist Pam Fessler has unearthed the lost world of the patients, nurses, doctors, and researchers at Carville who struggled for over a century to eradicate Hansen’s disease, the modern name for leprosy. Amid widespread public anxiety about foreign contamination and contagion, patients were deprived of basic rights―restricted from leaving Carville, and often forbidden from contact with their own parents or children. Neighbors fretted over their presence and newspapers warned of their dangerous condition, which was seen as a biblical “curse” rather than a medical diagnosis. One particular patient, Stanley Stein, helped improve so many people’s lives around the world within the confines of Carville. Carville’s Cure demonstrates the necessity of combating misinformation and stigma if we hope to control the spread of illness without demonizing victims and needlessly destroying lives.

Pam Fessler, a newly published author,  recently retired from NPR, where she was an award-winning correspondent and editor for more than 28 years. Before coming to NPR, she was a senior writer at Congressional Quarterly and a reporter at The Record newspaper in Hackensack, New Jersey. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Rutgers University, and a Master of Public Administration degree from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. 

Sponsored by the Association of Jewish Libraries and B’nai Israel Blumberg-Zalis Library.

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