( 282 ) 



XVIII. Observations on the Lepra Arabum, or Elephantiasis of the 

 Greeks, as it a2)pears in India. By Whitelaw Ainslie, M.D. M.R.A.S. 



Read June 4, 1825. 



It is, I presume, a truth pretty well established, that all such cutaneous 

 affections as are not ushered in by particular febrile symptoms, are more 

 common and more inveterate in hot than in temperate climates : but, with 

 the exception of Doctors Hillary and Towne, I am not aware that any 

 author on tropical diseases has bestowed much attention on maladies of this 

 description, though some of them are singular in their character, and most 

 of them very untractablc. 



Travel writers, foreign as well as English, have been more liberal of their 

 observations. Pocock * mentions those of Damascus ; Volney t notices the 

 cuticular complaints of Egypt ; Stedman.t in his work on Surinam, is equally 

 considerate; Browne,§ in his travels in Africa, makes particular mention 

 of the Boras (Leuce) and Dziidttam (Elephantiasis), both in Egypt and 

 Syria: he indeed says that the leprosy is more rarely to be met with in 

 the first than the last named country, which it might not perhaps be difficult 

 to find a reason for ; and, in support of his assertion, we may cite Savary, 

 who, in his " Letters on Egypt," informs us that he never, while there,ll 

 saw one unfortunate leper ; though, by his " Letters on Greece," it would 

 appear that he found several in the islands of the Archipelago Cp^g^s 110, 

 111). Galen,^ however, gives us a very different account of that land in 

 his days. " In Alexandria quidem Elephas morbo plurimi corripiunfur 

 propter victus modum, et regionis fervorem." It is, notwithstanding. 



' See Pocock's Travels, vol. ii. page 122. 

 t See Volney 's Travels in Egypt, vol. i. page 248. 

 X See Stedman's Surinam, vol. ii. page 285. 

 J See Browne's Travels in Africa, page 332. 



II On the other hand, Pliny tells us that Elephantiasis was common in Egypt — Nat. Hist. 

 lib. xxvi. chap. 1. 



f Vide Op. Galen, class vii. page 107, F. 



