BOOK XXVI. IV. 6-vi. 9 



the oesophagus and pharynx,'' causing death very 

 quickl)^ 



V. I have said that leprosy * did not occur in Lepmsy. 

 Italy before the time of Pompeius Magnus, and that 

 though the plague usually begins on the face, a kind 



of freckle on the tip of the nose, yet presently the 

 skin dries up "^ over all the body, covered with spots 

 of various colours, and uneven, in places thick, in 

 others thin, in others hard as with rough itch-scab, 

 finally however going black, and pressing the flesh 

 on to the bones, while the toes and fingers swell up. 

 This plague is native to Egypt. When kings wei-e 

 attacked, it was a deadly thing for the inhabitants, 

 because the tubs in the baths used to be prepared with 

 warm human blood for its treatment. This disease 

 indeed quickly died out in Italy, as also did that 

 called by the ancients gemursa,'^ which appeared 

 between the toes, the very name being now obsolete. 



VI. This itself is a wonderful fact, that some Coiunu 

 diseases should disappear from among us while 

 others remain endemic, as for example cohim.* It 



was in the principate of Tiberius Caesar that this 

 malady made its wav into Italy. Nobody sufFered 

 from it before the Emperor himself, and the citizens 

 were greatly puzzled when they read in his edict, 

 in which he begged to be excused because of illness, a 



Unfortunately there are no simiUa in the medical writings by 

 which the text rnight have been settled. 



* See XX § 144 and list of diseases. 



' With the reading increscente : " it increases over all the 

 body, the skin being, etc." I suggest " plague," to bring out 

 the force of the emphatic ijisam. 



^ We do not know what gemursa was, this being the only 

 place (except once in Festus) where the word occurs. 



' An intestinal disease. See list of diseases. 



271 



