Leprosy Leprosy or Hansen’s disease, is a chronic, infectious disease that mainly affects the skin, mucous membranes, and nerves. A rod shaped bacillus named Mycobacterium leprea, causes the virus. Mycobacterium leprea is very similar to the bacillus that causes tuberculosis. The reason Leprosy is also known as Hansen’s disease, is because it was first identified in 1874 by a Norwegian physician named Gerhard Henrik Armeur Hansen. Leprosy appears in both the Old and New Testaments. In the bible Leprosy was not the disease that is recognized now, but as various physical conditions that were nothing like the disease. A punishment from God was what the