Damien, Father (Joseph Damien De Veuster)

Damien, Father (Joseph Damien De Veuster)( 1840–89),
Belgian missionary priest, went to Hawaii (1864), where he worked among the natives, and in 1873 went to the leper colony, where he ministered to the sick until he himself contracted leprosy, from which he died. His work was brought to public attention when Stevenson published a defense (1890) against a minister who had slandered Damien. C.W. Stoddard, who wrote about Damien in The Lepers of Molokai (1885), probably attracted Stevenson's attention to the subject.