Carl August Looft (1863-1943)

In 1890, Looft became assistant physician at Lungegård Hospital and physician at St. Jørgen’s Hospital. He collaborated with Armauer Hansen, and they published several important works together.

Looft was born in Bærum in 1863 and passed the medical exam in 1889.

The following year, he took over the position as assistant physician at Lungegård Hospital and physician at St. Jørgen’s Hospital. He held these positions for three years. He was concurrently head of the anatomy and bacteriology laboratory at Lungegård Hospital and secretary of the journal Medicinsk Revue.

At the laboratory, he was set to work investigating leprosy, under the guidance of the 75-year-old senior consultant Daniel Cornelius Danielssen and in collaboration with Armauer Hansen. In 1891, Looft became the first person to detect the leprosy bacterium in the tuberculoid form of the disease. In the following years, he also published works on leprosy together with Armauer Hansen, the best known of which is probably ‘Leprosy in its Clinical and Pathological Aspects’ from 1895. .

However, Looft had taken an early interest in childhood diseases, and he eventually resigned his position at Lungegård Hospital and became a private paediatrician in Bergen. Carl Looft was one of the first two paediatricians in Norway and was the first in the country to carry out, to any extent, epidemiological and clinical investigations of diseases and conditions in children.