My dermatologist burst into the examination room, quite excited. He explained that he had just received test results confirming that his patient (not me) had leprosy (Hansen’s Disease)! No, he was not glad that she had acquired this horrible, medieval disease. He was proud that he had correctly diagnosed it. All he knew about leprosy was from textbooks when he was in medical schools, he said. The disease just did not exist in 1980s America when he encountered this unfortunate patient, a 30-something American woman. My doctor reasoned that she had acquired leprosy when she was doing aid work in Africa.