18 MICRO-ORGANISMS AS PARASITES. 



a subject of unutterable dread in earlier ages. The Mosaic law- 

 abounds with the severest enactments for the banishment of the 

 leper from the society of his fellow men, and for the destruction 

 of all his goods. He was to rend his clothes and to bare his head 

 as he cried, "unclean, unclean," and he was to "dwell alone, 

 without the camp." 



The original habitat of leprosy seems to have been Egypt, 

 and it was brought thence into Europe by the victorious Romans. 

 By the first century after Christ it was established in Italy, and 

 from there spread to all the western countries under Roman rule — • 

 Spain, Gaul, and Britain. By the 7th century it was established 

 in Germany and Switzerland. Leper-houses existed at Verdun 

 Metz, and Maestricht in the yih century, and at St. Gall in the 

 8th, and Pepin and his great son, Charlemagne, made laws 

 regulating the mode of life of lepers. But it was amidst the stir 

 and movement of the Crusades that the ravages of leprosy 

 became frightful and almost incredible. In Western Europe alone 

 it was estimated that 19,000 leper-houses existed, most of them 

 being religious and dedicated to St. Lazarus ; in France, there 

 were at least 2,000 ; and in England, with its scanty population, 

 there were " 95 houses of the first class." 



The isolation of lepers was most strictly enforced both by law 

 and by popular sentiment. The greatest or the meanest of 

 mankind smitten by leprosy was driven from the society of his 

 fellow creatures for ever. Alms and food were left where he 

 could fetch them, but his presence, being felt as a deadly danger, 

 he was provided with a large wooden clapper, by which he was 

 bound to give warning of his approach, that all might flee from 

 him. A poet monk of the middle ages, whose songs all Germany 

 was singing, was nevertheless one of these pitiable outcasts ; he 

 is described as " Aussatzt " — thrust out from amongst the people 

 (der ward von den Leuten aussatzig). Cruel as this life-long 

 banishment was for the victims of leprosy, the stern policy 

 adopted seems to have been successful in its aim, for in the T5th 

 century the disease had already declined, and in the 17th had 

 mostly disappeared. It survived in a sporadic form in a few 

 isolated places, and it is not yet extinct at Bergen in Norway, where 

 all its characteristics may be studied, unchanged by the lapse of 



