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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    liave now seen how many there are who have relations at present in the asylum, it is scarcely too much if we reckon those inhabitants of Bergen who belong to leprous races by thousands. Here are, therefore, rich materials for heredity. As regards Bergen, no change of climate, and hardly any change in the conditions of hfe in other respects, can be adduced, as the large majority of immigrants belong to the working classes. A. great number of these are quite as much exposed to injurious chmatic influences as the population of the country districts, and sometimes even more. The dwellings are, to a great deal, quite as bad as in the country. The only thing which can be alleged as an advantage of removal is a relatively larger consumption of fresh meat and greater cleanhness. The gain is, especially in this last respect, considerable. The itch is, according to my experience of two years as a physician among 2000 to 3000 of the working classes, of very rare occurrence, while this disease is in the country districts still very frequent, although much less so during the last few years. According to the same experience the change of food seems, on the other hand, to have less influence, for chronic derangement of the digestive functions is so common a disorder among the working population that it can scarcely be more frequent among the country population. As to the general state of health, it is incomparably worse in Bergen than in the country districts. Scrofulous afi'ec- tions are very common, and mortality is much greater. The soil seems thus to be quite as favorable for the fostering of leprosv as in the country districts, unless cleanliness is the chief factor. But leprosy occurs in Bergen; and, then, the question presents itself whether we can say that it arises spontaneously there. If that is the case, there would be so much the greater probability for here- dity being also an attribute. There have been, since 1856, noted more than fifty cases of leprosy in Bergen; the preponderating number of these (about forty) are people who either have gone out from the asylums and have settled in the town, or such as have had the disease in a manifest form only a few years after their immigration. These cases have no significance for us. As to the others, on which I defer communicating details, some of them ought to be considered as undoubtedly spontaneous cases according to common view, and for not a single case of leprosy among natives of Bergen can heredity be pleaded with any certainty; and this is quite striking when the materials for inheritance are so abundant, and when the spontaneous unspecific occurrence would appear to take place; these two modes of origin ought to go hand in hand. And yet the family conditions are what our attention has been almost exclusively directed to. This does not serve to support the theory of heredity. But neither spontaneous occurrence nor heredity have much to