Some medieval patients had to attend their own funerals

A closer look

Getting diagnosed with leprosy in the Middle Ages meant you literally had to attend your own funeral. Patients exiled to lazarets—isolated medical compounds run by the crusading Order of Saint Lazarus—underwent a horrifying rite where a priest threw graveyard dirt on them and legally declared them corpses. Because they were technically dead in the eyes of the law, they lost all property rights and marriage statuses. However, inside the hospital walls, they created heavily regulated, self-governing micro-societies, operating their own bakeries, courts, and internal economies far away from society.