The legacy of Armauer Hansen.

Abstract

Dr Gerhard Henrik Armauer Hansen. Illustration by Venita Jay, MD, FRCPC. L has been known to humankind from ancient times. This age-old scourge appeared in Europe several hundred years before the common era. The medieval treatment of lepers remains one of the darkest incidents of man’s inhumanity to man. The extreme disfigurement caused by this disease led to segregation of afflicted persons who were regarded as social outcasts and made to live in special dwellings. With spread of the disease during the Middle Ages, numerous leprosy hospitals (leprosaria) were established. Lepers had to announce their presence with bells or clappers and wear distinctive attire. People afflicted with this dreaded scourge were dealt with as if they were no longer alive. It took the persistence and dedication of a visionary Norwegian to uncover the mystery of leprosy. In discovering the causative organism of leprosy, Gerhard Henrik Armauer Hansen touched millions of lives. Because of Hansen’s work, leprosy became one of the first communicable diseases wherein a specific causative organism was demonstrated. Hansen (1841–1912) was born in Bergen, Norway, on July 29, 1841, the eighth in a family of 15 children. During harsh times in the 1840s, his father Claus Hansen, a merchant, took on additional work to make ends meet but was eventually forced into bankruptcy. Because of the family’s difficult financial situation, Armauer Hansen put himself through the University of Christiania (now Oslo) by working as a tutor. He took courses in physics and zoology and had an enduring interest in botany and athletics. During his medical school years at the University of Christiania, Hansen was not afraid to contradict his teachers. He was offered a position at the university as a substitute prosector in anatomy. As a prosector, Hansen quickly gained the respect of his students, who were his age. Hansen graduated with honors in medicine in 1866 and completed an internship at the National Hospital in Christiania. Thereafter, he served as a physician in a small fishing community in Lofoten, Norway. In the winter of 1868, Hansen returned to Bergen to pursue a line of research that was to make him a household name in medicine. It is not precisely determined when leprosy first made its appearance in Norway, but it likely entered Norway