Gerhard Armauer Hansen

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Gerhard Armauer Hansen

Gerhard Henrik Armauer Hansen (actually Gerhard Henrik Hansen ; born July 29, 1841 in Bergen / Province Søndre Bergenhus , Norway; † February 12, 1912 in Florø / Province Nordre Bergenhus ) was a Norwegian doctor and zoologist in Bergen who discovered the pathogen in 1873 Leprosy (also called Hansen's disease ), which Mycobacterium leprae , identified in unstained specimens. He was the first to find out that a chronic disease can be caused by bacteria .

Life

The scientific staff of the Bergen Museum in the 1880s (from left to right): Jørgen Brunchorst (1862–1917), Gerhard Armauer Hansen, Fridtjof Nansen , Daniel Danielssen, Herman Friele (1838–1921).
Memorial plaque on Hansen's birthplace, Kroken 5, Bergen
Bust in the botanical garden of the University of Bergen

Hansen was born as the eighth of 15 children of the shop owner Claus Hansen (1800-1885) and his wife Elizabeth Concordia Schram (1812-1883) in Bergen . He spent much of his childhood in Askøy on the farm of his uncle and aunt, who were childless themselves. When Gerhard was ten years old, his father had to give up his business for financial reasons and work first as a teacher and later as a bank teller. Nevertheless, Gerhard was able to attend high school. He had to finance his medical studies at the Royal Friedrichs University in Christiania , today's Oslo, among other things by working as a teacher. In 1866 he graduated with honors. As a representative for the prosector , he initially stayed at the university and completed an internship at the Rikshospitalet in Christiania. He then worked as a doctor in Lofoten , but returned to his birthplace in 1868.

At that time, Bergen was the center of European leprosy research . While the disease had almost disappeared in Central Europe, the number of diseases in Scandinavia has increased again since the 18th century. With the St. George's Hospital, Bergen had a leprosy that dates back to the 14th century. Around 1850 two more leprosy hospitals had been set up in the city, including the Lungegaards Hospital, a research facility with places for 90 patients, which was headed by Daniel Cornelius Danielssen . Hansen became an assistant doctor at Danielssen and published his first work on leprosy in 1869. In the same year he received "Professor Skjelderup's gold medal for medical scientific work" for his dissertation Bidrag til Lymphekjertlernes normal og pathologiske Anatomi ( German  contribution to the normal and pathological anatomy of the lymph nodes ), which only appeared in print in 1871. While Danielssen considered leprosy to be a hereditary disease , Hansen quickly came to the conclusion that he was dealing with a chronic infectious disease . In 1870, a state grant allowed him to go abroad for further training in the field of bacteriology. He first traveled to the Anatomical Institute of the University of Bonn , headed by Max Schultze , where he practiced microscopy. However, the Franco-Prussian War affected his studies so much that he decided to travel on to Vienna, where he came into contact with the teachings of Charles Darwin , which from then on shaped his worldview. Other stops on his journey through Central Europe were Saarbrücken, Heidelberg and Venice.

When looking at infectious material under the microscope, Hansen - like other researchers before him - had seen brown sticks as early as 1869. Over the years, he suspected that these could be the bacteria responsible for the disease. It was not until 1874 that he reported in detail in a Norwegian and in 1875 in an English magazine. However, he was unable to provide direct evidence that the chopsticks actually caused the leprosy because he was unable to transmit the infection to laboratory animals or to cultivate the bacteria. Nor did he know of any method of staining the bacteria. This was only achieved in 1879 by the German bacteriologist and student Robert Koch Albert Neisser , who had visited Hansen in Bergen and received tissue samples from him for examination. In the subsequent controversy as to who was the actual discoverer of Mycobacterium leprae , Hansen remained the winner. It was finally recognized in 1897 at the 1st International Leprosy Congress in Berlin. In 1909 he chaired the follow-up conference in Bergen.

Since Hansen was unable to show that leprosy is contagious in animal experiments, he introduced leprosy material into the cornea of his patient Kari Nielsdatter Spidsöen against her will on November 3rd, 1879 . In 1880 there was therefore a court case, as a result of which Hansen lost his position as a doctor at the nursing home for leprosy no. 1 ( Pleiestiftelsen for spedalske no. 1 ). However, he continued to remain Inspector General of Leprosy in the Kingdom of Norway, a post he had held since 1875. On his initiative, the Norwegian state pursued a policy of isolating lepers, which was adopted by the majority of countries worldwide after the Bergen Leprosy Congress as an example of how to combat the disease.

Hansen now worked at the Bergen Museum , on whose board he had been a member since 1872. He participated in the scientific processing of the animals collected by the Norwegian North Sea Expedition between 1876 and 1878. In particular, he described the annelids and the sponges . In 1887 he went on a study trip to the United States to study the spread of the disease among the descendants of leprous Norwegian immigrants. After Danielssen's death, Hansen became President of the Bergen Museum in 1894. He was committed to leprosy welfare throughout his life and to a modern leprosy law in Norway (1877/85). This law enabled the disease to be contained quickly.

During the last years of his life, Hansen's health deteriorated noticeably. He had been infected with syphilis during his student days and was increasingly suffering from the long-term effects. At the age of 36 he had already suffered a minor stroke . In the last decade of his life, recurring heart problems tied him to bed for weeks. He died in Florø in 1912 on an inspection trip to the fishing areas north of Bergen. The urn with his ashes was placed in the base of his bust in the botanical garden at the Bergen Museum.

Hansen was married twice. In 1873 he married the daughter of his mentor Daniel Danielssen, Stephanie Marie (1846–1873), who died of tuberculosis ten months after the wedding . In 1875 he married the wealthy widow Johanne Margrethe Tidemand (1852–1930). Their son Daniel Cornelius (1876–1950) became a doctor like his father and from 1929 headed the tuberculosis hospital in Bergen.

Fonts (selection)

  • Gerhard Armauer Hansen: Foreløbige Bidrag til leprosy characteristics . In: Nordisk medicinsk Arkiv . Volume 13, 1869, pp. 1-12.
  • Gerhard Armauer Hansen: Bidrag til Lymphekjertlernes normal og pathologiske anatomy . Jensen, Christiania 1871.
  • Gerhard Armauer Hansen: Undersøgelser stated Spedalskhedens Aarsager . In: Norsk Magazin for Laegervidenskaben . Volume 4, No. 9, 1874, pp. 1-88.
  • Gerhard Armauer Hansen: On the etiology of leprosy . In: British and Foreign Medico-Surgical Review . Volume 55, 1875, pp. 459-489.
  • Gerhard Armauer Hansen: Bacillus Leprosy . In: Virchow's archive . Volume 79, 1880, pp. 32-42.
  • Gerhard Armauer Hansen: Den Norske Nordhavs Expedition 1876–1878. Zoologi . Grøndahl, Christiania. Annelida , 1882, Spongiadæ , 1885.
  • Gerhard Armauer Hansen, Carl Looft: Leprosy in its clinical & pathological aspects , John Wright & Co., Bristol 1895.
  • with HP Lie: The history of leprosy in Norway (= communications and negotiations of the 2nd leprosy conference in Bergen 1909). Leipzig 1910.

literature

Web links

Commons : Gerhard Armauer Hansen  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hansen put the maiden name of his grandmother Henrike Margarete Armauer (* 1780) in front of his surname, probably in order to be more easily distinguishable from other bearers of the frequent family name Hansen. See: Max Hundiker: Gerhard Henrik Armauer Hansen. Ancestors of the discoverer of the leprosy pathogen (PDF; 1.24 MB). In: Die Klapper 22, 2014, pp. 21–22.
  2. ↑ Michael Skjelderups gullmedalje on the website of the Museum of University and Science History Oslo, accessed on April 23, 2015
  3. ↑ Reinaldo Guilherme Bechler: Combating leprosy and forced isolation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: scientific discussion and institutional practice (PDF; 1.9 MB), inaugural dissertation, Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg, 2009, p. 99 ff.
  4. ↑ Manfred Vasold: Hansen, Gerhard Armauer. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 533.
  5. ^ Gerhard Armauer Hansen: On the etiology of leprosy . In: British and Foreign Medico-Surgical Review . Volume 55, 1875, p. 489.
  6. ^ A b Lorentz M. Irgens: The fight against leprosy in Norway in the 19th century . In: Michael . Volume 7, No. 3, 2010, pp. 307-320.
  7. ↑ Knut Blom: Armauer Hansen and Human Leprosy Transmission. Medical Ethics and Legal Rights (PDF; 1.8 MB). In: International Journal of Leprosy . Volume 41, No. 2, 1973, pp. 199-207.
  8. ↑ AM Moulin: Science, Myth and Medicine before 1947 . In: Ulrich Tröhler, Stella Reiter-Theil (Ed.): Ethics and Medicine, 1947-1997. What does the codification of ethics do? Wallstein, Göttingen 1997, ISBN 3-89244-272-X , p. 41–60 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  9. ↑ a b Ole Didrik Lærum: Gerhard Armauer Hansen. In: Norsk biografisk leksikon
  10. ↑ a b Kajsa Katharina Wennberg-Hilger: The epidemic occurrence of leprosy in some coastal regions of western Norway in the 19th century with a supplementary report on the corresponding situation in Sweden (PDF; 2.0 MB), inaugural dissertation, Rheinischen Friedrich- Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, 2011, p. 79.
  11. ^ Wolfgang U. Eckart : Gerhard Henrik Armauer Hansen . In: Wolfgang U. Eckart and Christoph Gradmann (eds.): Ärztelexikon. From antiquity to the present , 1st edition 1995 CH Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung Munich, 2nd edition 2001, 3rd edition 2006 Springer Verlag Heidelberg, Berlin, New York. Medical glossary 2006 , doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-540-29585-3 .
personal data
SURNAME Hansen, Gerhard Armauer
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hansen, Gerhard Henrik Armauer (full name); Hansen, Gerhard Henrik (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Norwegian doctor
DATE OF BIRTH July 29, 1841
PLACE OF BIRTH Mountains
DATE OF DEATH February 12, 1912
Place of death Florø