Leprosy is treatable. It once wasn't. It tore a path through humanity in very recent history, though the topic of history and the word "recent" is an ambitious concept.
If you go to Venice on a holiday, and head to some of the smaller islands around the famous floating city, you will see the place I took this image.
Away from the Bridge of Sighs and the boutique keep-sake stores, the dead bodies have mostly decomposed, incinerated, or recycled by the universe. The ruins of this leper colony still leave their mark on the world.
The disease still has an impact, with most people hearing the word shuddering and thinking about horrific suffering and highly contagious pus-sputtering individuals living on the edge of society. Yet, the World Heatlh Organisation reports that in the last 20 years, 16 million people have been cured of leprosy.
Chicks do dig scars, so if you want to get some, be a social outcast for a while (Even though its not really contagious) you can. I don't suggest this is a good idea, and while there is a vaccine that is effective against leprosy, the fact that it tides from a bacterial contagion makes it mutable; and a risk; but one that can be treated with 12 months of antibiotics.
I wasn't thinking about this stuff when I saw the ruins while I cruised along on a boat. Reflecting on travel photography gives you time to pause and think more deeply about stuff.