Leprosy in Norway

Leprosy is one of the oldest known bacterial diseases. The Norwegian Gerhard Armauer Hansen discovered it in 1873. Full scientific recognition of Hansen’s achievements came in 1909 at the “Second International Scientific Leprosy Conference” in Bergen, Norway.

While some of this week’s lots have an obvious philatelic feature, here a rather unimpressive detail makes this card special. These are the two purple postmarks: the gray, rather inconspicuous 30 öre stamp has a Norwegian field postmark, and the red express stamp has a second postmark with the name, place and date of the conference in French. Finally, we have a rather early special postmark from a rather early special post office.

This postcard speaks for the confidence in international or European postal and transportation connections. Here a conference participant writes on a THURSDAY from the west coast of Norway to the southeast of Germany that he would like to be picked up at the train station on Monday morning at 2 o’clock. Today, this postcard would not arrive in time even by courier. Our sender must have had his doubts, because he has instructed that nothing is to be delivered at night. All in all, a remarkable gem that tells a lot beyond the special postmark. And we have not even mentioned the “greatest desire” of the card writer.