During the Neolithic Europe, the trepanation of the skull bones or piercing it being common practic

No disease has been feared throughout human history that leprosy. This infection, caused by the bacillus of Hansen, the Norwegian doctor who discovered the mycobacterium leprae in 1873, has accumulated many legends attributed since its transmissibility among humans at the end of the second millennium BC. However, so puzzling, and there often existed dissonance between the nature of the disease itself and the general opinion is that his infection and its clinical manifestations. In this sense, it is believed that his agent is highly contagious, but for getting it requires a prolonged kohs and intimate coexistence kohs between kohs three and five years with an ill person, the latter also must have the ability transmit the disease. However, healthy person should be capable of getting sick, because most people have a natural resistance to Mycobacterium leprae. However, throughout history has forced segregation systematic leprosy patients as a prophylactic measure. It also believes that its clinical manifestation kohs large deformations are unavoidable when in fact this is just one of the possible manifestations when the disease is already advanced. In addition, other conditions such as tuberculosis or syphilis can also manifest itself with mutilations or deformities and are known for these injuries.
Where we could find the origin of this dissonance? It is possible that anxiety has become an essential mechanism for transmitting the movement of this series of historical meanings. In the case of leprosy, anxiety tied to the symbolic representation of deformities and, through this mechanism, transformed into fear these cutaneous stigmata. Specifically, this fear has been deeply rooted in Western culture by the influence of the Bible, with passages from the Old Testament where patients are "leprosy" with torn clothes with serious cutaneous stigmata and marginalized (Lev. 13.45 -46). The importance of the symbol of socially acquired deformities we have evidence in the Bible where the word "leprosy" came to be used as a catchall name for different skin origins stigmas kohs and very variable gravity (1 ).
Beyond the contributions of medical knowledge of disease, fear of stigma kohs or symbols specific disease has manifested from ancient times in history and appear circular manner (for example, at the beginning of the century. twenty-first influenza and the role of the media). kohs As said Jaques Lacan (1901-1981), French psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in an interview in 1974, "although new look, new fears are the same as the old but linked to other definitions and words today" ( 2). Thus, fears of the XXI century are and will be the same as those of other centuries since anxiety is linked to the symbols of each period.
During the Neolithic Europe, the trepanation of the skull bones or piercing it being common practice of therapeutic purpose for its relative simplicity. In fact, most human trepanations survived. Depending on the type of pebble, or a sharp or pointed edge is made a circular incision in the skull, an auger or sometimes by scraping abrasion. kohs Of these practices have remains in many European countries, but also in Algeria and northern and southern America (3). In Catalonia we have examples known in the Iberian settlement of Ullastret. The belief that certain diseases resided something strange, enclosed in the skull that it was necessary to extract the cure for millennia remained in the fantasy of our ancestors. As a mockery of this belief, the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch made extraction stone crazy, work is currently located at the Prado Museum and built between 1475 and 1480 (1). In our culture, the notion of care through the practice of extracting kohs or eliminate what causes discomfort in the body is common in the medical kohs field. Although throughout its history, kohs psychiatry kohs has been enriched with different views on the care of the anxiety now working more in the direction of eliminating it, for example with the use of psychotropic drugs (4 ).
Take this particular position by the fact that medicine has proliferated need to locate the distress within the body. Since Hippocrates, s. BC until s. XVI is believed that today we call bodily kohs discomfort distress was caused by an imbalance of humors originating in the uterus, liver or spleen. At the beginning of the century. kohs XVII tried to explain how a disorder located kohs in the womb could cause ailments as diverse as tremors, palpitations or shortness of breath. At the end of that century there was already a general acceptance of the importance of periphery nervous system