LEPROSY. 245 



LETTER LXXIX. 



TO THE SAME. 



SELBORNE, Jan. 8, 1778. 

 DEAR SIR, 



THERE was, in this village, several years ago, a 

 miserable pauper, who, from his birth, was afflicted 

 with a leprosy, as far as we are aware, of a singular 

 kind, since it affected only the palms of his hands 

 and the soles of his feet. This scaly eruption usually 

 broke out twice in the year, at the spring and fall ; 

 and by peeling away left the skin so thin and ten- 

 der, that neither his hands nor feet were able to per- 

 form their functions ; so that the poor object was half 

 his time on crutches, incapable of employ, and lan- 

 guishing in a tiresome state of indolence and inac- 

 tivity. His habit was lean, lank, and cadaverous. 

 In this sad plight he dragged on a miserable exist- 

 ence, a burden to himself and his parish, which was 

 obliged to support him, till he was relieved by death, 

 at more than thirty years of age. 



The good women, who love to account for every 

 defect in children by the doctrine of longing, said 

 that his mother felt a violent propensity for oysters, 

 which she was unable to gratify, and that the black 

 rough scurf on his hands and feet were the shells of 

 that fish. We knew his parents, neither of whom 

 were lepers ; his father, in particular, lived to be far 

 advanced in years. 



In all ages, the leprosy has made dreadful havoc 

 among mankind. The Israelites seem to have been 

 greatly afflicted with it from the most remote times, 

 as appears from the peculiar and repeated injunctions 



