Ok, I’ve been doing a research project on leprosy, aka Hansen’s disease. I’ve been looking for books about it, and I’ve found some that were very helpful.
However, I remember that I read a book about leprosy when I was several years younger. It was about different diseases, and I definately remember that leprosy was one of them. It described how the untreated patients would lose the ability to blink, and some doctor came up with a surgical procedure that linked the eyelids to the muscle that closes the jaw. The patients ended up blinking in time to their chewing for a while before they got used to their new muscle hook-up. It also told about how the patients’ eyebrows fell out, and they got hair transplants to replace them, which worked, only they would have to trim their eybrows because they would grow and grow.
The book also talked about other diseases, but I don’t really remember which ones they were. Tuberculosis was one, I think. It may have been a children’s book, because I was about 12, and it wasn’t over my head.
Does this ring any bells for anyone? I’ve looked on Google, Amazon, and Alibris, to no avail. I turn to my fellow Dopers in a last ditch effort to find this book.