Fight for survival: the life of a Hansen's disease sufferer through his correspondence with Adolpho Lutz

This project presents the complete set of letters between the family of a Hansen's disease (leprosy) sufferer in the state of Maranhão, in the Northeast of Brazil, and the doctor and bacteriologist Adolpho Lutz. For more than twenty years Fabricio Caldas de Oliveira and Numa Pires de Oliveira, father and son, exchanged a steady flow of letters with the scientist in pursuit of a cure for the disease that had assailed Numa since childhood. The 24 letters compiled here paint a unique portrait of the medical and social drama confronted by this family, and the results of the use of chaulmoogra oil and other medications in their search for alternative treatments.