i88 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



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 tender that neither his hands or feet were 

 able to perform their functions; so that the poor object 

 was half his time on crutches, incapable of employ, and 

 languishing in a tiresome state of indolence and inactivity. 

 His habit was lean, lank, and cadaverous. In this sad 

 plight he dragged on a miserable existence, 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 which 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 given 

 them in the Levitical law.^ Nor was the rancour of this 

 foul disorder much abated in the last period of their 

 commonwealth, as may be seen in many passages of the 

 New Testament. 



Some centuries ago this horrible distemper prevailed all 

 Europe over; and our forefathers were by no means 

 exempt, as appears by the large provision made for objects 

 labouring under this calamity. There was an hospital for 

 female lepers in the diocese of Lincoln, a noble one near 

 Durham, three in London and Southwark, and perhaps 

 many more in or near our great towns and cities. More- 

 over, some crowned heads, and other wealthy and charit- 

 able personages, bequeathed large legacies to such poor 

 people as languished under this hopeless infirmity. 



It must therefore, in these days, be, to an humane and 

 thinking person, a matter of equal wonder and satisfaction, 



1 See Leviticus, chap. xiii. and xiv. 



