The biography of Dr. Louise Aall who studied medicine in Germany and Switzerland before choosing to work as an itinerant bush doctor, setting up a clinic in Mahenge in Tanganyika (now Tanzania).


She was the first western physician to identify and treat a variant of epilepsy, now recognized by the World Health Organization as “ Nodding Syndrome.” While working at her clinic in 1959, Dr. Aall was asked by the Red Cross to fly to Matadi in the Belgian Congo to manage a 300-bed hospital. Protected by United Nations soldiers from Morocco, she served as the hospital’ s lone bedside physician during the height of the civil war atrocities.


In 1961, at the invitation of Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Albert Schweitzer, she worked with him at his renowned clinic in French Equatorial Africa (Gabon). Despite ongoing financial and geographical hurdles, her innovative treatment and rehabilitation programs for epilepsy in Tanzania continue to benefit thousands of African patients with “ moon madness.”