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If this occurs on a person’s face, it may rarely produce a smooth, attractive-appearing facial contour known as lepra bonita, or “pretty leprosy.”

Ashim Chowla, former head of the nonprofit Lepra India, says people today still flinch when he tells them he has been treated for leprosy.

According to Guillermo Robert, a monitoring, evaluation and learning officer at Lepra, there are many reasons leprosy cases go undetected.

Slow-growing though the bacteria may be, if left untreated, they will multiply into the many trillions, forming thick, scaly nodules on the face and extremities — “lepra” is the Greek word for scaly — and destroying the Schwann cells that sheathe and protect the nerves of the peripheral nervous system.

It appears to have been the scaly tetter, which they sometimes denominated psoriasis, at others lepra, a synonymous affection; but neither pustular nor vesicular.