A Burnt-Out Case follows Querry, a celebrated European architect of churches who has lost all feeling: for his work, for women, for God and for himself. Travelling as far as the river boats will take him, he arrives at a leproserie deep in the Belgian Congo run by a community of missionary fathers and by Dr Colin, an atheist physician devoted to his patients.
Medical tag
Leprosy
Leprosy (Hansen's disease), leper colonies and stigma.
Works
Jewish Antiquities is Josephus' twenty-book retelling of Jewish history from creation to the outbreak of revolt against Rome in 66 CE. It is not simply a paraphrase of the Bible, though its first half follows Genesis through the monarchy, exile and restoration.
Sulpitius Severus's Life of St. Martin made Martin of Tours one of the defining saints of the Latin West.
St. Thomas Becket and the Canterbury Miracles traces a murder into a medical archive.
The Bible is the sacred scripture of Judaism and Christianity, and the reference edition presents the King James Version of 1611, the most influential translation in English. It is a library rather than a single book.
The Koran, or Quran ('recitation'), is the central scripture of Islam. It consists of 114 chapters called suras, of very unequal length, each made up of verses (ayat).
Passages
- A Burnt-Out Case, Early chapters (Part 1)
Dr Colin explains to Querry the meaning of a burnt-out case and describes the mutilations left after the disease has run its course.
- Jewish Antiquities, Books 3-4, Mosaic legislation
Josephus summarizes laws about purity, childbirth, skin disease, bodily emissions and priestly inspection, translating ritual categories for Greek readers.
- Life of St. Martin, Dialogue tradition: leper at Paris
Martin's kiss of a leper reverses stigma through touch, making the leper's isolation and bodily revulsion part of the healing scene.
- St. Thomas Becket and the Canterbury Miracles, Benedict and William miracle collections
The collections record claims involving fever, blindness, paralysis, seizures, madness, leprosy, wounds, and accidents with unusually concrete social detail.
- The Bible, Leviticus 13–14
Laws for priestly diagnosis, isolation outside the camp and purification of 'leprosy' in people, garments and houses.
- The Koran, Sura 3:49; 5:110
Jesus heals the blind and the leper and raises the dead by God's permission.
Quotes
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