92 
ARMANER HANSEN. 
The Bacillus of Leprosy. By G. Armaner Hansen. 
With Plate YIII. 
It was not ray intention to make any of ray investigations 
on this subject public at present, but as not only Dr. Edlund, 
to whom in the preceding year I showed preparations, and 
mentioned that I considered leprosy a parasitic disease, in 
his little work on ^ Leprosy ’ speaks of its precise origin as 
something that he has discovered in the form of micrococci,^’ 
but also Dr. Neisser, of Breslau, who passed some portion of 
this summer in Bergen has just published the result of his 
investigations of those preparations that he made while here, 
and as these results also point out that in general, the pre- 
parations are filled with bacilli ” which he supposes to be 
peculiar to leprosy, and as its contagium ” — I feel myself 
called upon to announce what I have attained to, up to the 
present time, in my researches after the same contagium,” 
and, this, partly to assert my priority with reference to this 
discovery, and partly in order to advance those details in 
research which 1 omitted to announce on account of the 
still uncertain result in my report to the Medical Society in 
Christiania, 1874, concerning my investigations into the 
etiology of leprosy. In this report I Iiave briefly stated that 
I often, indeed generally, found, when seeking for them in the 
leprous tubercles, small rod-shaped bodies in the cells of 
the swelling,! whilst, on the contrary, I never found 
such bodies ” in blood newly taken from leprous patients, 
in which, however. Dr. Edlund declares he has seen the 
microccoci ” described by him. This observation of Dr. 
Edlund I must, however, after having examined several 
• times, quite lately, blood taken from a leper, consider as 
unreliable. I found very often, on the contrary, after pre- 
serving the blood-preparations in a damp room, that in the 
course of a few days there appeared articulated threads, 
which, I believe, must be considered as a fungous growth, 
and which never appeared in blood-preparations taken from 
either healthy or syphilitic people. After having employed 
myself for a lengthened period in these investigations of the 
blood, I proceeded to those of the tubercle, and shall com- 
municate, as follows, a few of the memoranda I made during 
that time. • 
Case No. 755. — Johannes Giil, vigorous nodules; 
February 28th, 1873. A nodule taken from each side of 
the nose with scissors, and laid in a carefully cleaned watch- 
• Vide ‘ British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Be view,’ April, 1875. 
