^86 Dr. Ainslie's Observations on the Lepra Arahum. 



that, before death ensues, the leper is sometimes actually torn limb * from 

 limb. The medical men of his day and country not unfrequently called 

 the affection Leoriia, from the circumstance of its distorting the human 

 countenance, and giving it somewhat the appearance of that of a lion when 

 enraged ; others again, the same writer observes, bestowed on it the appel- 

 lation of Satyriasis, from the shameless lascivionsness that attends it. 



Modern French writers have named this leprosy " Le mat rouge," and it 

 may be found described under that name by Pierre Campet, in his " Mala- 

 dies graves de la Zo7ie Torride " (p. 290). But, although he gives upon the 

 whole a tolerably good account of it, he does not bestow on it its proper 

 name of Elephantiasis ; that he thinks fit to reserve, like Dr. Thomas,t and 

 some others, for what we term the Barbadoes or Cochin leg, which is the 

 Ekphas of Haly Abbas, and the Elephantia of Avicenna. Modern Arab X 

 physicians call it Ddi'l-fil J-iil ^j It is the A'nay taal of the Tamools : 

 the Yi-aniigay-kaloo of the Gentoos ; in Dakhinf it is Hati ha paun 

 ^yljl^ j_jia in Sanscrit ^-51MI?3 Gaja-pdda (Elephant's leg) ; and in Cin- 

 galese, Goney Parangy. 



Dr. Adams seems to be of opinion, that the Greek authors were not only 

 totally unacquainted with the leprosy, distinguished by the tumefaction on 

 the limb, and which afterwards got the name of Elephantia, from some of 

 the Arab authors ; but that the Latins § themselves were practically ignorant 

 both of this and the true Elephantiasis of the Greeks. In this last inference, 

 however, which is perhaps drawn from Lucretius,ll I presume that the 

 Doctor has made a slight mistake, of which the reader may satisfy himself 

 by turning to Pliny's^ Natural History, where he will find that the genuine 

 Elephantiasis was well known in Italy, but not before the time of Pompey 

 the Great; yet it would not appear to have been of long continuance in 



* Vide Aretaeus, lib. ii. cap. xiii. 



t See his Modern Practice of Physic, vol. ii. page 188. 



X It would appear that Abubeker Mohamed Rhazes has, of all the Arab writers, given tlie 

 best account of this disease : he lived and practised in Persia upwards of eight hundred years 

 ago, and has made an exact distinction betwixt Elephas and the true Elephantiasis — See Histoire 

 de la Medecine, by Le Clerc, page 771. 



^ See Adams on Morbid Poisons, page 289. 



11 See Lucretius, lib. v. 



^ See Pliny's Nat. Hist., hb. xxvi. cap. i. 



