D. C. Danielssen. 



13 



board of managers of the theatre 1 ); he was one of the founclers of 

 the Bergen Athenæum (1854); of the ''Society for the promotion of 

 Norwegian fisheries" ; of the Bergen Scientific Society, of which he 

 was president from it foundation in 1885 till his death; from 1870 

 he was president of the "Nyttige selskab", for many years chairman 

 of the Bergen picture gallery etc, and finally we have the Bergen 

 Museum, in the management of which he was inclucled in 1852, 

 and the head of which he was for 30 years. 



The history of this institution for forty years is so closely 

 connectecl with Danielssen's name, and his efforts for it have been 

 of so great importance for scientific life in this country, that the 

 treatment of this part of his energetic work is one of the most impor- 

 tant parts of my article and must be dealt with in a special section. 



II. 



Danielssen's medical authorship began with a small treatise in 

 1840. His first great work was that which he, along with Boeck, 

 published 1847, "On Leprosy", which appeared also in a French 

 translation. In this book Danielssen wrote the medical, and Boeck 

 the historical, account of the disease. Besides the description of the 

 outward signs of the illness, its progress and so on, this work also 

 contains anatomical and histological investigations as to the imcroscopic 

 structure of the nodules, and Danielssen was able to find out the 

 particular cells in which, as Hansen has recently shown, the bacillus 

 which produces the disease has its head quarters. The bacillus itself 

 could not possibly be found, as the methods for demonstrating it 

 were not discovered. 



As is known, leprosy assumes two forms, viz. the "nodular" 

 and the "anaestetic", and in the above work only the first was the 

 subject treated of. This deficiency was soon filled up by a "Traité 

 de la forme anastetique de la Spedalskhed" , published by Boeck and 

 Danielssen in ..Samling af iagttagelser om hudens sygdomme" 

 (1855 — 62), in which collection Danielssen treats of psoriasis and 

 herpes, whilst Boeck wrote of syphilis, and of a mode of vaccination, 

 afterwards abandoned, against this disease. 



These two works are Danielssen's principal ones on medical sub- 



l ) He was always deeply interested in the theatre, and this interest induced 

 him to send in for two years theatrical notices to "Bergensposten". 



