The story of leprosy is the story of humanity. It is a story of isolation and exclusion, of resilience and resistance, one which has permeated global cultures in myriad ways for thousands of years, dividing the world into the ‘clean’ and the ‘unclean’. Despite the forced segregation of patients ending in the 1980s, the disease still retains a dark reputation to this day. Oliver Basciano’s journey to demystify leprosy takes him from the Romanian border, the hinterlands of Brazil and the fringes of Siberia to the Japanese archipelago, Robben Island and the northern settlements of Mozambique. It reveals the image of medieval leprosy to be a 19th century myth invented to justify gross mistreatment of patients, a blueprint used for further state-sanctioned stigma: colonialism, racism, religious and economic exploitation.