On the etiology and transmission of leprosy in nineteenth century Madras, India.

Thanks to the Norwegian physician Gerhard Hansen, we knew of Mycobacterium leprae (Actinobacteria: Actinomycetales: Mycobacteriaceae) and much of the etiology of leprosy (Hansen’s disease) by 1873.[1] Although the subtle biological details of M. leprae were known only in the late 19th century, the Madras Presidency in British India was a particular focus of leprosy treatment and research in the early nineteenth century. The present paper focuses on the local British medical efforts to understand leprosy in early nineteenth-century Madras, particularly those detailed in the little known paper by the Madras surgeon William Judson van-Someren, published in the Madras Quarterly Journal of Medical Science in 1861.[2] The Madras Leper Hospital (MLH) was established as an institution separate from the Madras Native Infirmary (MNI) in 1814, because both medical authorities and patients at the MNI had become increasingly concerned that contact with the leprosy patients would spread the disease.[2,3] van-Someren, as superintendent of MNI, took the opportunity of a growing patient cluster at MLH to learn about a disease, which caused so much personal suffering and to critique current theories of disease transmission.