Discovery of Mycobacterium leprae by Armauer Hansen

Although by the sixteenth century European physicians and scientist had begun to challenge how Galen described then human body and its illnesses, no one succeeded in replacing his explanation for leprosy until 1873, when Norwegian physical Armauer Hansen described an organism subsequently known as Mycobacterium leprae.

The first known mycobacterium was not M. tuberculosis but one isolated from a skin node of a leprosy patient is a leprosarium in Bergen Norway, described as early as 1873 by Armauer Hansen and later renamed Mycobacterium leprae.

Due to the lack of suitable standing methods, Hansen demonstrated this bacterium a native smear releasing the intracellular by treatment with a hypotonic solution.

Hansen had been conducting research on leprosy because the number of cases of the illness had been increasing in Scandinavia during the nineteenth century.

The name Mycobacterium means ‘fungus-bacterium’ and arose from the characteristic fungus-like produced by the tubercle bacillus when grown on liquid media.
Discovery of Mycobacterium leprae by Armauer Hansen