A proven human case was verified by DNA taken from the shrouded remains of a man discovered in a tomb next to the Old City of Jerusalem, Israel, dated by radiocarbon methods to the first half of the 1st century.The oldest strains of leprosy known from Europe are from Great Chesterford in southeast England and dating back to AD 415–545. These findings suggest a different path for the spread of leprosy, meaning it may have originated in Western Eurasia. This study also indicates that there were more strains in Europe at the time than previously determined. Discovery and scientific progress
Literary attestation of leprosy is unclear because of the ambiguity of many early sources, including the Indian Atharvaveda and Kausika Sutra, the Egyptian Ebers papyrus, and the Hebrew Bibles various sections regarding signs of impurity (tzaraath). Clearly leprotic symptoms are attested in the Indian doctor Sushrutas Compendium, originally dating to c. 600 BC but only surviving in emended texts no earlier than the 5th century. They were separately described by Hippocrates in 460 BC. However, Hansens disease probably did not exist in Greece or the Middle East before the Common Era. In 1846, Francis Adams produced The Seven Books of Paulus Aegineta which included a commentary on all medical and surgical knowledge and descriptions and remedies to do with leprosy from the Romans, Greeks, and Arabs.Leprosy did not exist in the Americas before colonization by modern Europeans nor did it exist in Polynesia until the middle of the 19th century.
Josefina Guerrero was a Filipino spy during World War II, who used the Japanese fear of her leprosy to listen to their battle plans and deliver the information to the American forces under Douglas MacArthur. King Henry IV of England (reigned 1399 to 1413) possibly had leprosy. Vietnamese poet Hàn Mặc Tử
Ōtani Yoshitsugu, a Japanese daimyō

Leprosy in the media
English author Graham Greenes novel A Burnt-Out Case is set in a leper colony in Belgian Congo. The story is also predominantly about a disillusioned architect working with a doctor on devising new cure and amenities for mutilated victims of lepers; the title, too, refers to the condition of mutilation and disfigurement in the disease. Forugh Farrokhzad made a 22-minute documentary about a leprosy colony in Iran in 1962 titled The House Is Black. The film humanizes the people affected and opens by saying that "there is no shortage of ugliness in the world, but by closing our eyes on ugliness, we will intensify it." Molokai is a novel by Alan Brennert about a leper colony in Hawaii. This novel follows the story of a seven year old girl taken from her family and put on the small Hawaiian island of Molokais leper settlement. Even though this is a fiction novel it is based upon some very true and revealing incidents which occurred at this Leprosy settlement. The lead character in The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen R. Donaldson suffers from leprosy.