Leprosy is now a treatable disease, thank God. But before it was a treatable disease, it was a death sentence. A slow, agonizing, living death where the skin rotted and body parts fell off due to injuries that went unfelt by those afflicted with the disease. A diagnosis or even a suspicion of the disease meant being dropped off in a leper colony to be forgotten by the land of the living, a death of years in isolation, never to see loved ones again.