Please activate JavaScript!
Please install Adobe Flash Player, click here for download
ePaper created 2014-09-15, 12:31:02 | version 1.32.01
CHARLES LOUIS DROGNAT LANDRÉ Leprosy occurred in overseas European colonies, but also appeared to be highly prevalent in the western part of Norway in the 19th century. The debate on its cause was confused by a diversity of ideas, but by around the middle of the 19th century both Norwegians and British alike vigorously defended the idea that the disease was hereditary, with no role for infectivity. The Dutch Charles Louis Drognat Landré (1844-1917) entered the debate in 1867 with the dissident opinion, defended in his thesis at Utrecht University (title: “On the contagiosity of lepra arabum, proven by the history of this disease in Suriname”), that leprosy was a contagious disease. Two years later he published his ideas in a French monography.[7] At the core of his argument was the observation of 12 white settlers in Suriname, suffering from leprosy, for whom contact with non-white leprosy patients - African slaves or their descendants - could be demonstrated in all cases. Drognat Landré’s French publication was read by the Norwegian Armauer Hansen. The latter concludes that it was Drognat Landré’s book which made him aware that Norwegian research had paid insufficient attention to the question of infection. Hansen continued his research in this new direction and discovered the culpable micro- organism in 1873. In an obituary after Hansen’s death in 1912, H. P. Lie, his closest collaborator and successor as leprosy medical officer in Norway, commented that: “All of Hansen’s investigations fitted completely those results, which Drognat Landré had arrived at through investigations in Surinam.”[8] 14 BWEADVSMGFINCORR:Opmaak 1 21-07-2014 17:39 Pagina 14