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Congregation. His superiors further accused Damien of being a "loner" because of his unhappy relationship with the three assistants they had sent him at different times. However, no one was more irritated by Damien's fame than Hawaii's Yankee missionaries. Stern Puritan divines felt leprosy was the result of the Hawaiian people's decadence. The segregation policy would have to be enforced to hasten the inevitable physical and moral collapse of the essentially rotten Hawaiian culture. There were medical doctors who were so convinced of an essential connection between leprosy and sexual immorality that they insisted that leprosy could be spread only through sexual contact (Damien the Leper). From the time he arrived, Father Damien never showed his disgust, despite working for sixteen years in what has been described as a living hell. Upon his landing, he immediately considered himself one of them, referring to the group as we lepers. In all thing