Historic Louisiana

Carville, a task few lay people could bring
themselves to undertake. The Daughters
served at Carville from its founding until its
closing in the 1990s.
Between 1905 and 1916, the state of
Louisiana embarked on two major building
programs for Carville. In 1905 it began
constructing numerous bungalow-style
cottages for use as patient, medical, and
chaplain facilities, and added a clinic and
dining facilities, a laboratory and operating
room, and a central steam plant for heating.
By 1916 it had added $30,000 worth of
cottages, a waterworks, fire protection and
sanitary sewer systems, an electrical plant, a
cold storage plant, and a new clinic.
One of the great architectural features of
the early campus was the introduction in
1905 of the first covered walkways, prototypes
of the elegant two-story, enclosed walkways
that distinguish the campus today. These
early raised boardwalks connected the bungalows
from building to building at porch
level, “making it possible for a patient to
walk or be conveyed under cover from any
building to another, without ever having to
negotiate steps or try to roll a wheel chair
across wet grass.
When Senator Joseph Ransdell of
Louisiana became acquainted with Carville,
he realized that the cure of leprosy was a
national concern. He introduced legislation to
provide for the funding of a national hospital.
Founding and developing the state lepro
-sarium may well be the single most progressive
act of the state’s history, and it le
eventually to the Congressional act, passed in
1917, that permitted the U.S. Public Health
Service to purchase the Louisiana Leper
Home. World War I delayed implementation,
but the sale culminated in 1921. From 1921
until 1941 hundreds of experiments were
undertaken at Carville to find cures for
Hansen’s Disease. In the 1930s the New Deal
poured funding into Carville to create a new
facility of double quadrangles with covered
walkways and complete laboratories.
In 1940, Dr. Guy Faget arrived at Carville
as chief medical officer in charge. As the name
suggests, Dr. Faget was no stranger to
Louisiana. A tuberculin specialist, he had a
background in treating acid-fast diseases,
such as leprosy. Before the close of his first
year, Dr. Faget had begun to correspond with
researchers at Parke-Davis Company, and, in
March 1921, his first volunteers were injected
with the Sulfone drug Promine. After the first
volunteers received treatment with Promine,
improvements were slow but dramatic. Early
cases recovered in six months, and advanced
cases got better in two to three years. Soon
other drugs were added. Abbott Laboratories
unveiled Diason in 1943, and Promizole came
on the market in 1945. Through careful
testing, Carville doctors, with important
contributions from the Daughters of Charity
nursing staff, learned to regulate dosages
to limit side effects. For the first time
in history, Hansen’s Disease patients began to
get well and be discharged in large numbers
from Carville.
Louisiana’s relations with the United States
perfectly exemplify the complexity of human
relations. Twice an unwilling partner,
Louisiana has reveled in her Americanisms.
She has profited from the wealth of America.
She has given her port, her sugar, her timber,
and her oil to the greater partner. Only two
things she has held back—her sense of self
and her sense of place.
✧
James Buchanan Eads (1820-1887) was a
civil engineer, though untrained, who
constructed the first bridge across the
Mississippi River. Built of brick and steel, its
central span stretched five hundred feet.
Salvage operations on the Mississippi gave
him an acute knowledge of hydrology. He
conceived the idea of jetties to funnel and
scour the channel at the mouth of the
Mississippi. The splendid success in
1879 made him a household name in
Louisiana. His achievement earned him
recognition worldwide.
COURTESY OF THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS
COLLECTION, 1974.25.27.122.
CHAPTER III ENDNOTES
1
1 J. Fair Hardin, “An Outline of Shreveport and Caddo Parish History” The Louisiana Historical
Quarterly, Volume 18 no. 4 (October, 1935), 759-871.
CHAPTER III
37