1873

Norwegian scientist Gerhard Ammauer Hansen identifies Mycobacterium leprae as bacterium that causes leprosy. In Britain, “Medical debate about leprosy continued into the 1880s and 90s. The question of whether it was heredity or contagious remained, but the discovery of Mycobacterium leprae had opened up further problem with contagionists unable to explain how the disease was transmitted and contracted . . . Hansen’s discovery of the bacillus at the same time as the germ theory of disease was being elaborated reinvigorated the traditional idea that leprosy was contagious and carried debate about the disease into a wider public sphere” (Edmond, 79-80). “Reported cases from the Cape and from the Australian colonies undermined the idea of the white settler colony as a healthy offspring of the metropolitan parent (81).