P L Y D E K M U S T B O R T H E N

Lyder Must Borthen died the 8th December 1924, at the age of seventy five. Since 1876 he had practised in Trondhjem, his native town, almost exclusively as an oculist.

His researches on the colour sense of school children induced him to propose a new theory for the colour vision, exposed in his dissertation of 45 pages: )) Synsindtrykkene, specielt med hensyn paa farvesandsen, forklarsde ved molekularbevaegelsea published at Trondhjem 1885. This work was merely specula- tive. Borthen admitted himself that he had no clinical or expe- rimental facts to support his opinion; it is however interesting to note the observation of Dr. Harald Gjessing that the views of Borthen are akin to the theories recently proposed by I. Bar- raquer and L. Koeppe.

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Dr. Lyder Borthen's chief service to ophthalmology is his re- searches on eye diseases in lepers. He began this work at Reitgjerdet, the leper hospital near Trondhjem. A financial sup- port granted him by the Norwegian Storting enabled him to extend his examinations to the leper hospitals of Molde and Bergen. It was nearly the last chance, for the number of lepers was rapidly decreasing in Norway; of the five former leper hos- pitals now one only remains viz. ,Pleiestiftelsen No. la. in Ber- gen.

Borthen had the opportunity of examining eye diseases on 456 lepers; he had a large number of excellent photographs taken of their faces and had the different conditions of the eyes painted in water colours.

Dr. Borthen worked out his observations from a clinical and a statistical point of view. Dr. H. P. Lie in Bergen was persua- ded to undertake the pathological microscopy, by which, among other things, he discovered that the bacillus leprae can be found also in the eyes of maculo-anaesthetic lepers. The results of these researches were published in the richly illustrated stan- dard work ,Die Lepra des Auges((, Leipzig 1899, which at the Tnternational Exhibition in Paris 1900 was rewarded with the gold medal.

In n supplementary work by Dr. Borthen, ,Die Blindenver- haltnisse bei der Lepracc, Kristiania 1902, are pasted, on 37 plates, 74 positive photographs directly reprinted from the ori- ginal negatives.

Lyder Borthen with these two works rendered invaluable ser- vice to leprology as well as to ophthalmology and for ever in- scribed his name among the important Norwegian investiga- tors on leprosy.

In private life Borthen was a loveable and highly cultured man.

S. Holth.