216 Epidemics. 



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and white, they would suspect it to be leprosy ; but that 

 disease, not being indigenous to Greece, nor yet having 

 spread by infection there being no epidemic tendency to 

 aid its development in that part no real malignant or fatal 

 leprosy would be found amongst them ; but a disease which 

 in outward form put on several of the indications of the 

 Mosaic leprosy got the title of leprosy which was simply 

 lepra vulgaris a most troublesome disease of a very 

 superficial nature, and not having any fatal tendency. 



But, when true leprosy came, it was unknown amongst 

 them ; its distinctness from lepra vulgaris, was readily 

 perceived, and a new or distinct nomenclature was adopted 

 a disease with which they probably first became familiar 

 whilst Alexander the Great remained in Egypt; and though 

 called by the Egyptians lepra, they gave it at once, by a 

 wonderful practical gift, a totally distinct name, that the two 

 diseases, lepra viilgaris and, true leprosy, might never be con- 

 founded with each other. Hence the confusion of titles, for 

 one and the same disease, between the Greek and Arabic 

 writers. If then, leprosy, properly so called, had no 

 existence as a spreading disease out of Egypt from 750 B.C. 

 and onwards to 103, or 60 B.C., how are we to account for 

 its dying out so completely ; whilst in Palestine it was so 

 well known to the priesthood so late as 808 B.C., that its 

 rising upon the forehead, etc., of Uzziah, when sacrilegiously 

 entering upon the priest's functions, as a visitation from 

 God, they immediately thrust him out of the Temple ; and 

 until the day of his death he lived in a separate house to 

 himself? the promptness of action at once indicating the 

 familiarity of the priests with leprosy at that time. 



Taking as a convenient date 750 B.C., or thereabouts, it 

 appears that leprosy ceased to be a spreading disease, and 

 was unknown beyond its own endemic region, but other diseases 

 adverse to the spread and infection of leprosy prevailed through- 



