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

  • Gerhard Armauer Hansen
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.

    19/42 page 473
    1875.] extensive family M'ho have become leprous, have now removed west- ward to regions where the disease is at home, while those who have remained near the family home are free from the disease. Still more evidently does this appear in a large family at Volden. It is a family that comes from the before-mentioned farm Solliden ; the family is so large that not nearly all its members have been noted ; theleprous Rasmus was of opinion that there were about 150 cousins, and of these there are again many children. Now, in all this exten- sively ramified family, there is only leprosy in two houses; in one it is the mother, a son, and a daughter, who are leprous, and these dwelt at the end of a long fjord, where there were lepers before, partly on the same farm and partly on the neighbourina^ farm ; in the other house there is only one leper; these last dwell in another village, but the leper has constantly rowed during the fishery with his leprous cousin of the house first mentioned. Leprosy seems thus to be less attached to family than to intercourse. In Olden, in Nordfjord, there live two families, and in Stryen one, who by marriage have become connected. In the latter and in one of the Olden families there is a leper in each; for the one case there have been three and for the other two previous healthy generations. In that part of Stryen where the one leper is, leprosy is relatively of frequent occurrence. I have visited the two Olden families, and I have seldom seen so fine well-grown and powerful people. A daughter of one of these famihes is leprous ; she served at the house of a priest in Daviken, together with a lad who was obliged to leave his place on account of his leprosy, and who died shortly after. According to the usual custom among servants, she attended this man, made his bed, washed and mended his clothes. Also in these cases I must consider hereditary disposition as not very probable. At the farm Bjorlo at Nordfjordeidet, which, like all farms here, lies on a terrace and is thus very dry, there have been two brothers and the son of one of them lepers; moreover, a more distantly related woman who dwells in the neighbourhood is also leprous. Here the relationship seems to be of importance, and likewise for the two children in another family. But no leprous ancestors are known for any of them. How the first leper at Bjorlo could possibly have got the disease it is not known, neither is any information to be had with regard to the more distantly related woman, but the second at Bjorlo has, during the building work, lain in the same bedi with his leprous brother, and the son has naturally had intercourse with his leprous father,with whom he lived; and of the brother and sister, the sister was married with a leper, and the brother is brother- in-law to the two leprous brothers at Bjorlo, where he also dwelt and had intercourse with them. All the cases at Bjorlo, as well as the leprosy of the female relation in the vicinity, fall in the interval from 1843 to 1856.
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