Since the 90’s of the twentieth century the history of leprosy increasingly has gained the interest of historians coming from divergent backgrounds. This lead to a proliferation of studies that give an overview from ancient times until the present day and in different geographical contexts. These scholars predominantly belong to the field of medical and social history. Whereas medical historians have focused on questions with regard to the origin of the disease, the prevalence of leprosy and the treatment or cure, social historians have rather focused on issues of stigma and exclusion. There, however, also exist studies that combine both research interests and have come up with challenging views that breach with a disciplinary account of leprosy’s history. One of the best examples of this multidisciplinary account is Rod Edmond’s Leprosy and empire. Regardless the efforts to come up with an approach of leprosy that combines different disciplinary foci, there are still some disciplines to be found that have been neglected, most notably education. 

This absence of an educational approach towards the history of leprosy partly can be explained by referring to the dominance of the above-mentioned social and medical approaches. But the absence also has to do with the fact that up till now historians of education largely have neglected the  educational impact of viruses and bacteria. There are of course some notable exceptions like for example the work of Altenbaugh on the impact of polio on learning sites or the work done by Nelleke Bakker on the history of tuberculosis in the Netherlands. But overall historians of education up till now have not been convinced of the importance of what one could call a bacteriological or virological approach towards the history of education. This contribution wants to fill in this historiographical gap by taking a closer look to the history of leprosy in Belgian-Congo and exploring the role played by the Mycobacterium leprae in the construction of difference in this colonial context.

Given the recent attention for the history of Belgian colonization and the existing studies on the history of education in Belgian-Congo it again is remarkable that leprosy has not been highlighted. We say remarkable for the history of leprosy cannot be disconnected from the history of education as it can be said that the disease itself created multiple and interdependent educational spaces: one for example can think of the preventive measures taken towards the indigenous patients/people, the way doctors and nurses were educated in order to diagnose the disease or the propaganda movies that were made in order to collect money in Belgium for the fight against leprosy in the Colony. In this contribution we, for the first time, will sketch out how these different leprosy-related educational spaces operated in the Belgian-Congo. In this way we not only aim to contribute to the existing literature on the history of leprosy, for up till now not much is known about the history of leprosy during the period of Belgian colonization. We also want to extend the existing literature about the history of education in Belgian-Congo – cf. the studies of Jan Briffaerts and the contributions of Marc Depaepe – by adding a medical touch to the dominant approach of educationalization. If the concept of educationalization has proven successful in demonstrating the paternalistic tendency of educational initiatives in Belgian-Congo it has not fully been capable of integrating the scientific baseline of colonization – referred to as colonisation scientifique in the literature. 

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