The reason most travellers come to Lambarene. Albert Schweitzer arrived on the Ogooue in 1913, built his own hospital on the riverbank, and ran it until his death in 1965. He fed and housed patients' relatives while they recovered, an approach that drew people from huge distances in an era when most of Gabon had no medical care of any kind. The wooden wards he built, his living quarters, his medical instruments and his organ are all preserved as the Albert Schweitzer Museum, and you can wander through them in an hour or two.
The modern hospital next door is still working — one of the best-equipped facilities in Central Africa, treating malaria, sleeping sickness and AIDS in the same compound where Schweitzer once operated by lamplight. Staff are used to visitors and a small gift shop sells books, postcards and locally made handicrafts. The whole complex sits on a low bluff above the river with views of pirogues passing below.