Paul Brand - Fearfully and Wonderfully: The Marvel of Bearing God’s Image

Philip Yancey

I FIRST LEARNED ABOUT DR. PAUL BRAND in 1976 while writing my book Where Is God When It Hurts. As I was pondering the problem of pain, my wife found in the closet of a medical-supply house an intriguing essay he had written on The Gift of Pain. Dr. Brand had a unique point of view: while most people seek to escape pain, he had spent several million dollars in an effort to create a pain system. Thank God for pain! he wrote. I cannot think of a more valuable gift for my leprosy patients.

After training as an orthopedic surgeon in England, Dr. Brand spent most of his medical career in India, where he made a dramatic discovery about leprosy, one of the oldest and most feared diseases. Careful research convinced him that the terrible manifestations of that cruel diseasemissing toes and fingers, blindness, skin ulcers, facial deformitiesall trace back to the single cause of painlessness. Leprosy silences nerve cells, and as a result its victims unwittingly destroy themselves, bit by bit, because they cannot feel pain.

When Dr. Brand moved from India to a high-tech laboratory in Louisiana, he applied what he had learned about insensitivity and painlessness to diseases such as diabetes. Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop later told me that Dr. Brands findings revolutionized the treatment of diabetic feet, helping prevent tens of thousands of amputations each year.

Dr. Brands work earned accolades on several continents. Queen Elizabeth II appointed him Commander of the Order of the British Empire, Indias Mahatma Gandhi Foundation selected him as the only Westerner to serve on that board, and the US Public Health Service gave him their highest award. Despite such international recognition, humility struck me as his strongest attribute.

When I met him, Dr. Brand was still adjusting to life in the United States. Everyday luxuries made him nervous, and he longed for a simple life close to the soil. He preferred going barefoot and spent his spare time bird-watching and tending his garden. Although he knew people such as Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Albert Schweitzer, and Prince Philip, he rarely mentioned them. He talked openly about his failures and always tried to deflect credit for his successes to his colleagues. Most impressively to me, the wisest and most brilliant man I have ever known devoted much of his life to some of the lowliest people on the planet: members of Indias Untouchable caste (now called Dalits) afflicted with leprosy.