Epidemics. 175 



their children, or forbidding them to marry ; but if it was a 

 disease so much excluded from ordinary intercourse with 

 men.that the Leviticallaw actually demanded that "he shall 

 put a covering upon his upper lip, and shall cry, Unclean, 

 unclean " (Leviticus xiii. 45), How is it that his children, 

 if it was hereditary, were not included in the same con- 

 demnation ? 



But it will be said the fact of his being excluded the camp 

 and dwelling alone, abhorred of men and women, would be 

 sufficient to exclude marriage, or his wife remaining with 

 him. This would answer very well if it were not certain 

 that women occasionally have leprosy, and for them the 

 same regulations pertained as were instituted for the male, 

 and lepers of either sex were not forbidden to live together. 

 Moreover, the Levitical law distinctly assumes that cases 

 would present themselves of long standing, and which, 

 through carelessness or indifference to the law, long escaped 

 detection ; for, Moses writes, " When the plague of leprosy 

 is in a man, then he shall be brought unto the priest ; and 

 the priest shall see him : and, behold, if the rising be white 

 in the skin, and it have turned the hair white, and there be 

 quick raw flesh in the rising ; it is an old leprosy in the skin 

 of his flesh, and the priest shall pronounce him unclean, and 

 shall not shut him up : for he is unclean " (Leviticus xiii. 

 9 n). The bare fact of no provision being made for 

 hereditary leprosy, and the greatest caution being taken 

 that it should not be approached within given limits by 

 living cotemporaries, points precisely to the fact of its 

 non-transmissibility, but to its present infectious cJuiracter, 

 probably from the breath as well as body exhalations ; which 

 view was entertained by Aretaeus, Galen, and Avicenna, the 

 latter mentioning that it is also endemic in Alexandria ; 

 and the Arabian, Alsaharavius, maintains three causes : 

 1st, hereditary taint ; 2nd, food ; and 3rd, contagion 



