Leprosy Heritage Sites - Museum, St. Jørgen’s Hospital Leprosy Museum, Bergen, Norway

St. Jørgen’s Hospital. Photos Courtesy The Leprosy Museum

St. Jørgen’s Hospital is one of Scandinavia’s oldest hospital institutions. It was established in the early 1400’s. In the 1870’s, more than 170 people with leprosy were being treated at St. Jørgen’s. The last person with leprosy was admitted on October 31, 1896 and over the next 50 years, the resident population slowly died out. The hospital had 43 patients in 1900, of which 14 were still alive in 1920, and by 1930 the figure had dropped to five people. The last two residents died in 1946. One was from Fjell, outside Bergen, and had been admitted in 1891. The other was from Eivindvik in Sogn, and had been at the hospital since 1895. After over 50 years at St. Jørgen’s, they both died within a few months of each other, at 82 and 78 years old.Today, St. Jørgen’s Hospital houses The Leprosy Museum, which was established in 1970, and stands as a monument to the 8,000 persons known to have had leprosy in

Norway

.The Museum also pays tribute to Dr. Gerhard Armauer Hansen who, through his discovery of the leprosy bacillus in 1873, lay the foundation for the discovery of a cure for leprosy, which would ultimately result in the end of inpatient treatment.The Leprosy Archives in Bergen are a unique source of Norwegian leprosy history, and document the social, institutional and medical history. The archives are now part of the UNESCO Memory of the World program.[Information adapted from: The Leprosy Museum, St. Jørgen’s Hospital, Published by The Leprosy Museum in 2003, see http://www.bymuseet.no/?vis=80