Louis Willems

Louis Willems (25 April 1822 in Hasselt – 21 January 1907 in Hasselt) was a Belgian medical doctor, and one of the pioneers of bacteriology and immunology.

Biography He studied medicine in Leuven, receiving his doctorate in 1849 . He was the son of Pieter Jan Willems, a gin distiller and the mayor of Hasselt between 1836 and 1842. His statue stands next to the National Genever Museum in Hasselt.

Because of the gin industry the area around Hasselt had a large amount of livestock, as the waste products, fermented grains, were used to fatten cattle. An outbreak occurred around 1828 in Belgium of a lung plague, described as being like the farmer's disease. In 1833 the disease reached the Netherlands, particularly in the so-called "flushing district" in and around Schiedam. It reached Hasselt in 1838. It was contagious bovine pleuropneumonia, a disease that still occurred in outbreaks at the end of the twentieth century, such as France in 1980. In Australia a national eradication program led to disease-free status by 1973.