Patients come to him by referral, dreading what they may hear after being poked and palpated and scrutinized by one puzzled doctor after another, until someone wondered ominously--Leprosy?--and called William R. Levis at Bellevue Hospital in New York. It is gut-wrenching to be labeled a leper, a word that has shed little of its ancient stigma. Patients are grateful their condition has another name, Hansen disease, and if they ever risk telling someone what they have, they pray that person won't be the sort to look things up in a dictionary.
At least there is comfort in knowing that Levis is the very best. You won't end up deformed, not if he can do anything about it. "We cure them all," says Levis, who has been at this for 21 years, "but you want to cure them with no residual deformity." To do that takes experience: "You learn how to ...
