9 6 



or main branches running back through several decades, 

 or even a century and upwards, and ramifying more or less 

 widely in later times." Whenever this fell disease makes its 

 appearance in a family, other members are almost certain to 

 become affected ; and if we compare the total number of 

 recorded cases with the number of families affected, we shall 

 find that the number of individuals affected bears a propor- 

 tion of three to one to the families. Sometimes several 

 bleeder-children may be born of parents who have never 

 manifested the disease ; at other times, it becomes developed 

 gradually through a longer period of time, the anomaly 

 starting in a single individual, and descending directly 

 through a series of successive generations. A third, and 

 very important mode of propagation, is by means of indirect 

 transmission. " Thus, after one or more cases of haemophilia 

 have appeared among the children of healthy parents, the 

 affection is usually handed down, not so much by the 

 bleeders themselves, as by their non-bleeder brothers and 

 sisters ; and this singular mode of transmission of the out- 

 ward manifestations of the disease may be repeated for 

 several generations." J Thus much for the hereditariness 

 of this diathesis. 



The Leprous Diathesis. There has been some confusion 

 generated by the indiscriminate use of the two words 

 leprosy and lepra to signify the same disease, whereas the 

 two diseases which they respectively represent are quite 

 distinct from each other. True leprosy is synonymous with 

 elephantiasis Groecorum, and lepra Arabum, but the term 

 lepra as applied by the Greeks represented a disease charac- 

 terised by scaly white spots on the skin, sometimes 

 erroneously regarded as psoriasis, but which is unquestion- 

 1 Imraerman. 



