Dr. Montel apparently treated leprosy patients with methylene blue in the 1930s and apparently cured them. I couldn’t find a relevant medical publication on this.

There is no current research data on methylene blue and leprosy, so this could be a possibility for a modern beta test, perhaps in combination with silver?

1The Hour, September 24, 1935, p. 5

“Is leprosy curable?

From our correspondent.

Paris, in September.

There’s no point in describing leprosy again, this horrific disease that seems to predate human history and is mentioned in the myths of all peoples. Little has actually changed in its treatment: while there used to be leper towns where lepers were herded together, never able to leave, where they lived, married, and died (the city of Xomio in Tonkin, for example, was such a town), today they are concentrated in hospitals where they are well cared for, and where efforts are made to treat them, without it being possible to claim that any remedy exists that has any decisive influence on the disease. Even in Paris, there is a leprosy pavilion that never houses fewer than twenty sufferers, and the worst conditions are probably in Ethiopia, where about 800 of the 80,000 patients are cared for in European hospitals. All the more sensational is the news that French leprologists at the Montel Polyclinic in Saigon have succeeded in finding a simple remedy that, if appearances are not accurate, actually cures leprosy: after a twenty-year struggle against the “Hansen’s bacillus,” they have settled on the use of methylene blue, which the natives call the “blue doctor,” so impressed are they by the drug’s effectiveness. Whether methylene blue cures leprosy definitively, no one dares to claim. But if the patient was suffering, the pain now stops; open wounds close; the lion’s face, the “facies leonina,” disappears, and the disfigured features regain their former, already forgotten appearance; paralysis recedes. The decisive factor, however, is that cases of open leprosy are so effectively influenced that the patients, who can no longer transmit the disease, can be returned to their normal lives among healthy people. The doctors at the French leprosariums warn against triumphant resignation. In two or three years, if it turns out that there are no relapses, one could speak of a defeat of leprosy. But, despite all their reservations, they emphatically emphasize that to date, no remedy has been found that has produced any success at all, and certainly none whose effects have been so astonishing.”

2 Pilsner Tagblatt No. 292, December 18, 1935, p. 3

“The Islands of the Lepers

The fight of science against the plague —

Good results of treatment with methylene blue

Once a year, an eerie-looking ship appears in the port of Marseille. It isn’t anchored at the pier, but 500 meters out at sea. The ship’s ladder hangs in the air on chains to prevent anyone from boarding from a boat. The ship itself looks rather dilapidated; the hull is rusty, the sides are damaged, and from the outside, the interior also appears rather dilapidated. Pilots steer clear of this ship, and sailors cross themselves when they see it. Not a long black flag flies from any of the mastheads, like a reminder of the pirate era. The ship is a transport vessel for lepers.

An average of 100 cases of leprosy still occur annually in Europe. This terrible biblical scourge, which, according to legend, was brought into the world as punishment for the construction of the Tower of Babel and which the natives of Indochina call the “silver disease” because the bodies of those affected are covered from head to toe with armor-like, shiny silver pustules. The vast majority of sufferers live in Africa, Asia, and Oceania; in Zanzibar, Ethiopia, China, and India, they number in the tens of thousands; in Indochina, there are around 25,000.

Until now, there has been no cure for this disease, which first eats away at the earlobes and fingers, then slowly at the toes, hair, ears, and nose, and finally gives the face a frighteningly lion-like appearance (in the Indochinese Moi language, the terms for “leper” and “lion’s head” are identical). Treatment is limited to isolating the sick and easing their pain as much as possible. In the Far East, before European colonization, they were locked in special villages and left to their fate. The food intended for them was regularly placed at the village exit. Today, France transports its lepers to the island of Orofara in the Tahiti archipelago, which is inhabited exclusively by them, apart from a few Christian missionaries and European doctors. England transports its lepers to the isolated, untouched island of Gapalagos, between Tahiti and the Flanders Islands, some 400 nautical miles east of the Carolines, lost in the Pacific. The island’s native chief is responsible to the British commissioner on Amanu for ensuring that none of the sick leave the island and that no ships dock there without special permission.

Apart from the Californian physician Professor Walker, head of the US state leprosy clinic, it was primarily French doctors who, with unprecedented self-sacrifice, went on the offensive against this terrible disease. Dr. Yersin (note: the plague pathogen was named after him: Yersinia pestis) , from the Pasteur Institute, searched for the leprosy pathogen and discovered the healing serum against the plague, which has since been an indescribable blessing to tens of thousands of natives in the colonies. Dr. Feron went to Abyssinia and founded the Harrar leprosy clinic, which currently houses almost 800 patients. Professor Machoux gave further impetus to the Samaritan work; on his initiative, France created its leper islands, where the sick live in complete freedom, in contrast to the previous closed institutions. Dr. Le Mee spent half a year in 1933 on Orofara and, at constant, grave risk to himself, undertook the first practical serum experiments, some of which have already been successful. Finally, Dr. Montel oversees the eradication of leprosy in Indochina; he directs the polyclinic in Saigon, the leprosarium in Choquam, and the leper island of Culao Mong, where a total of around 500 patients are housed. Dr. Montel is also the initiator of the new treatment method currently under discussion. Dr. Montel treats his patients with injections of methylene blue (Pyoctanium coeruleum), which the natives of Indochina have enthusiastically nicknamed “The Blue Medicine Man.” His method does not guarantee a permanent cure, but it transforms the previously open leprosy into a closed one; The body’s fluids are purified, the “lion faces” disappear, the sick are ultimately no longer distinguishable from other people, the danger of infection disappears, and the patients can go about their business. And slowly, very gradually, the poisoned blood regains the ability to completely repel the germs from which the methylene blue has deprived them of their breeding ground.

The procedure is still controversial, and Dr. Montel himself is too responsible to declare the certainty of a complete cure as absolute certainty. For now, he is carefully observing the patients at the Saigon polyclinic who have been vaccinated with the new serum against the Hansen bacillus, and is recording the progress of the treatment day by day. But what has been achieved so far represents an enormous scientific achievement, considering the many past decades of unsuccessful leprosy research, the hundreds of doctors who dedicated themselves to this great work, more than one of whom perished from the deadly germ that penetrated their own blood, and the thousands upon thousands of white, black, and brown people for whom life in the leprosarium still represents unspeakable torture and death a joyfully welcomed release. With a renewed will to live and faithful hope, the sick of Orofara and Papalagos and Harrar and Choquam and Along and Culao-Mong and Zanzibar and Mecca look today to the quiet scholar and humanitarian in the polyclinic in Saigon.”

3Temesvarer Zeitung, November 20, 1937 (Volume 87, No. 264) p. 6

“When lepers rebel… 3 million lepers in the world — From oxhide to Chaulmesgra.
Hardly a year goes by without a leprosy rebellion breaking out somewhere in the world. In connection with the recent leprosy rebellion in Tichilesti, our SH correspondent asked one of the best experts about previous experiences in the field of leprosy treatment. Surprising successes have been achieved in recent years.

It’s always the same in these leper camps, in the towns built for lepers in isolated areas, on faraway islands. Any pretext is enough to stir up these people, who believe themselves doomed to die, to rebellion. We saw it in Egypt when lepers mobilized to march on Cairo because they were presented with their new earthenware when they deemed it necessary, and because they claimed that the flour had been stuffy lately and that the seasoning had been noticeably off.

In Tichilești, in the province of Tulcea in Romania. At dawn, the lepers stormed the instrument room, armed themselves with the doctors’ knives and scissors, and in an instant, the whole of Tichilești was a place of screaming and panic. Police officers were dispatched from Isacea in cars, who had to fire a few hundred warning shots before the patients regained their senses and, after lengthy negotiations, agreed to return to their barracks.

Tragic statistics

Leprosy—these two words, which mean the same thing, fill even Europeans with horror, even though they know that leprosy only occurs very rarely in their regions. The Balkans are particularly badly affected there. But all in all, the number of European cases is vanishingly small when one considers that there are approximately 3 million lepers living in the world. This sinister disease, which was a complete mystery just four or five years ago, has its most dangerous breeding grounds in India, Japan, and China. It is known that 4,000 lepers live in Burma. Colombia is also particularly badly affected. Leprosy is also encountered on Java, Hawaii, Ceylon, and many of the West Indies.

The frightening thing is that to this day, no one has yet solved the mystery of why this disease repeatedly attacks certain areas while completely sparing others. But the truth is that leprosy only occurs where a leper has once lived. Nevertheless, the big question “why?” often arises. How, for example, was it possible that leprosy suddenly disappeared from Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries?

Bacillus in rod form

It has been known for several decades that leprosy is caused by a bacillus. However, it has not been possible to cultivate this rod-shaped bacillus, convert it into a serum, or even transfer the bacillus to laboratory animals. While we know how leprosy infects the body (usually via the nasal mucous membranes), we still don’t know the source of the infection. Nor do we know why one person shows visible signs of leprosy after just a few weeks, while another doesn’t develop the disease until 15 or 20 years later.

Chaulmoogra4 5and trypan blue

When medical science began the fight against the leprosy pathogens using all modern means, it was a dead end. In India or the Philippines, people had sometimes seen lepers sewn into the fresh hide of an ox and forced to sweat in it. In Japan, hot baths were given to treat leprosy. But researchers only made a step forward when people in India discovered the chaulmoogra tree and learned from an ancient legend dating back to the time before Buddha that chewing the leaves and fresh sprouts of the tree was an effective remedy for the terrible disease. However, chaulmoogra had such a revolting taste that even severely suffering lepers preferred to remain lepers rather than swallow chaulmoogra.

Thanks to experiments by the German company Merck, it was possible to create a compound with camphor. This made it possible to inject the chaulmoogra substance into the skin. At the same time, experiments with trypan blue and methylene blue were also begun, achieving great success. However, relapses frequently occurred.

Not hopeless

Leprosy’s origins, development, and choice of victims are still unknown. But contemporary research knows how to deal with it. The first cases of recovery have already been reported. Of course, no patient can be guaranteed a cure, but progress has certainly reached the point where at least 10 percent of all patients are completely cured with the Chaulmoogra treatment, and another 60 percent experience some external improvement.6”

Chaulmoogra oil can now be easily obtained, for example, via eBay.

According to the manufacturer: “Chaulmoogra oil treats bruises, cuts, eczema and rashes, sprains, cramps and the restoration of skin affected by scrofula, dermatitis and psoriasis.

It leads to the elimination of the infection and promotes the growth of new skin around the affected area.”

7Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift No. 2, 1937, p. 56

“On the Methylene Blue Treatment of Leprosy. By R. Braga, F. Maurano, C. d. Carvalho, M. Beccehetti, and M. Junior. (Riv. d. Leprologia d. St. Paulo, Brazil) — At the annual meeting of the leprosy hospitals of St. Paulo, the above-mentioned observers reported on the methylene blue treatment of leprosy. In the Santo Angelo asylum, 25 of the patients behaved completely indifferently. In 18%, the intravenous dye administration according to Montel led to flattening of the tuberous forms. In the Aymores colonial asylum, the successes achieved with methylene blue remained far behind the improvements that can be achieved with chaulmogra oil. In the Cocaes leprosy series, one-third of the cases responded with the known improvements. Ulcerative blooms of the tuberous variant quickly became covered with skin. Increased infiltrates flattened. A return to normal could never be observed. The experiments with Crystal violet from Carvalho (Aymores), as well as those with brilliant green, encouraged the continuation of the experiments.”