Inge Heiberg

Who is Inge Heiberg?

Inge Valdemar Heiberg was a Norwegian physician who served as director of medicine in Belgian Congo from 1911 to 1920.

He was born in Christiania as a son of judge Edvard Omsen Heiberg and Minna Rode. He was a brother of Gunnar and Inge Heiberg, as well as a first cousin of Eivind and Gustav Adolf Lammers Heiberg and a first cousin once removed of Bernt, Axel and Edvard Heiberg, and uncle of Hans Heiberg.

He took the examen artium in 1879 and enrolled in medicine studies. After leading a social life among the "Kristiania bohême", being engaged to Bokken Lasson for some years, he graduated with the cand.med. degree in 1893. He tried his luck as a general practitioner in Aalesund, but quit after three years. He was hired as a physician in Congo Free State in 1897, and remained here until 1920, except for a study leave at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in 1902–03.

He assisted an LSTM team that arrived in the Congo Free State on 23 September 1903 to assess public health, and sleeping sickness in particular. The members were Cuthbert Christy, Joseph Everett Dutton and John Lancelot Todd. The team spent nine months in the Lower Congo, then on 30 June 1904 began investigating upstream as far as Kasongo. In Congo, he lived in Lado and Ibembo before moving to Boma when promoted to Médicin en chef in 1911. Among his professional endeavors was to fight the "sleeping sickness", but he also believed a certain degree of corporal punishment of the natives to be necessary as a part of disciplining and civilizing.