01307nas a2200121   4500000000100000008004100001100001300042245004500055856006200100300001200162490000700174520100400181       2019                            d1 aPandya S00aA pre-history of the morphological index  uhttp://www.ijl.org.in/2019/7%20S%20Pandya%20(153-158).pdf  a153-1580 v913 aThe article deals with an over-looked period in the modern history of leprosy, namely the first decades of the 20th Century. The introduction of soluble derivatives of traditional chaulmoogra and hydnocarpus oils for parenteral treatment was received with optimism by physicians working independently in American Hawaii and
by Leonard Rogers in colonial India. They reported similar after-treatment clinical and bacteriological phenomena, but stopped short of meaningful investigation of the latter. The pioneering studies of Froilano de Melo in Portuguese Goa on quantification and interpretation of changes in bacterial morphology in stained
slides are described, as also the conflict with Rogers's ideas. de Melo's three-fold 'HMG” morphological classification presaged Ridley's 'SFG' Index of five decades later. That ambiguities regarding bacterial viability based solely on morphology in stained smears, which were pointed out by de Melo, were later confirmed in the mouse foot-pad model.