On the etiology of leprosy / by G. Armauer Hansen, assistant physician to the leper hospitals at Bergen, Norway.

  • Hansen, G. Armauer (Gerhard Armauer), 1841-1912.
Date:
[1875]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the etiology of leprosy / by G. Armauer Hansen, assistant physician to the leper hospitals at Bergen, Norway. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    disease by demonstrating its contagiousness, it wouldj of course,, be the best if a direct proof could be given. I will briefly mention what seems to indicate, that such proof is, perhaps, attainable. There are to be found in every leprous tubercle extirpated from a living individual—and I have examined a great number of them—small staff-like bodies, much resembhng bacteria, lying within the cells; not in all, but in many of them. Though unable to discover any difference between these bodies and true bacteria, I will not venture to declare them to be actually identical. Purther, while it seems evident that these low forms of organic life engender some of the most acute infectious diseases, the attributing of the origin of such a chronic disease as leprosy to the apparently same matter must, of course, be attended with still greater doubts. It is worthy of notice, however, that the large brown elements found in all leprous pro- liferations in advanced stages, of which I have in 1869 already given engravings, republished in 'LeprousDiseases of theEye,^ by 0. B. Bull and G. A. Hansen, bear a striking likeness to bacteria in certain states of development, as these are represented by Klebs in the first number of * Zeitschrift fiir Experimentelle Pathologic und Phar- macologic j' and further, that in almost every preparation from a leprous tubercle, made with the utmost care to avoid contamination and kept for a number of days in the damp chamber, are developed conglobate masses of spherical bacteria or zoogloea. It would be desirable that other inquirers should direct their researches to this point. I could further point out several features in the pathology of leprosy that tell strongly in proof of its specific nature, but I must desist from doing so in this article. Perhaps I may make it the subject of a further communication.