Dr. Ainslie's Observations on the Lepra Arabum. 295 



the use of pork, when the hog had been improperly fed, may do mischief 

 on such occasions, I can more easily conceive, nay, know to be a fact. 



As far as regards the more remote causes of the leprosy of the Arabians, 

 it may, I think, be safely admitted, that hereditary taint is a prime agent, 

 accompanied by an extremely languid circulation, and a somehow defective* 

 condition of the skin, which prevents a free transmission of the cutaneous 

 discharge, thereby retaining in the habit what under other circumstances 

 would have passed away : some or all of such peculiarities being present, 

 the disease may perhaps be produced by one or more of the following 

 exciting causes, creating in the body a viscid, acrid, and morbid humour : 

 unwholesome food, such as decayed salt fish, taken at the same meal with 

 buffalo milk ; the flesh of swine or fowls, which had been permitted to feed 

 promiscuously on musty grains and certain acrid vegetables ;t irregular 

 living ; fear ; grief ; surfeits of various kinds, particularly of glutinous fish 

 after long and painful fasting ; alternate exposure to heat and cold ; night 

 damps ; want of cleanliness ; the use of impure water ; and mendicant 

 poverty. 



In proceeding to notice the treatment best suited for this lamentable 

 affection, it grieves me to say, that Elephantiasis has ever been considered 

 as one of the most difficult of all those disorders to which the human frame 

 is liable. Aretseus, of old, tells us, in the beginning of the chapter in which 

 he treats of this malady, " It is necessary that remedies should be more 

 powerful than diseases, in order to overcome them ; but what cure can 

 be devised sufficient to encounter so dreadful an evil as the present." 

 Dr. Turner,t in his work on diseases of the skin, declares that the 

 Elephantiasis of the Greeks is a most dreadful malady, if at all curable. 

 Dr. Heberden himself observes, that excepting in one patient, he never 

 saw or heard of a confirmed case of it terminating favourably. Nay, 



* Dr. Quincy supposed the cause of leprosy to be some original malconformation, in the 

 necessity of one secreting organ doing the office of another to which it is not naturally fitted..— 

 See his Medico-Physical Essays, Essay VI., on Leprosy. 



t Amongst the great variety of vegetables taken as food by the Hindus, Borae of those 

 picked up by the road side and eaten by the poor are of a deleterious nature, such as the 

 Toombay keeray (Tam.) Phlomis Indica. 



\ He defines it as contagious, and calls it a cancerous cacheria of the whole habit, arising 

 from gome fault in the liver or spleen, and consequent atrabilis or adust humour. — See his 

 work, pages 3 and 4, second edition. 



