Paul Brand
The Surgeon Who Gave Hands Back
Paul Brand, a surgeon born in India to missionary parents, returned there in 1946 and turned his skill to leprosy — the disease whose sufferers were shunned as untouchables. He showed that its terrible mutilation was not flesh 'rotting away' but the result of lost pain, and pioneered the hand and foot surgery that gave crippled patients back the use of their bodies.
- Pioneered reconstructive tendon-transfer surgery to restore use to hands clawed and crippled by leprosy, at the Christian Medical College Hospital in Vellore. wilson-ten-fingers p.10
- Showed that leprosy's mutilation — lost fingers, toes and limbs — comes from the loss of pain, which lets sufferers injure themselves unknowingly, not from the disease 'rotting' flesh. wilson-ten-fingers p.5
- Designed protective footwear to prevent the foot ulcers that disabled leprosy patients. wilson-ten-fingers p.11
- Founded a dedicated leprosy hospital at Karigiri, near Vellore. wilson-ten-fingers p.4
- 1946Returned to India as a surgeon after his medical education in England. wilson-ten-fingers p.4
- 1951A leprosy patient came to him at Vellore seeking the new reconstructive hand surgery. wilson-ten-fingers p.10
- 1965Moved to the United States to continue leprosy and pain research at Carville. wilson-ten-fingers p.4
Brand's discovery that 'pain is a gift' reshaped how leprosy is understood and treated worldwide, and his hand and foot surgery restored the use of bodies to countless patients before he carried the same lesson into wider pain research.
- Christian Medical College Hospital, Vellore — Vellore, Tamil Nadu still active
- Karigiri leprosy hospital (Schieffelin Centre) — Karigiri, near Vellore, Tamil Nadu still active
“Thank God for pain!” — Paul Brand wilson-ten-fingers p.5
Even inside the hospital, leprosy sufferers were treated as 'unclean' — shunned, refused buses and service, doubly outcast as untouchables — so Brand's work was as much against that revulsion as against the disease itself.
wilson-ten-fingers— pp. 4, 5, 10, 11
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