VOL. XXXI.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 475 



poison of the leprosy : hence eunuchs, and such as are of a soft, cold, and 

 effeminate nature, are seldom or never infected with the leprosy; and such as 

 are in danger of it, may, according to the opinion of physicians, be castrated." 

 And Mezeray says, he has read in the life of Philip the August, that some 

 men had such apprehensions of the leprosy, (that shameful and nasty distemper) 

 that to preserve themselves from it, they made themselves eunuchs. Now it 

 is highly probable that those persons that submitted to such a painful operation, 

 having before observed, that those who gave themselves up to a free and un- 

 restrained use of women, fell at length under such unhappy circumstances; and 

 so found the only measures to preserve themselves from it, was to be disabled 

 for such engagements; which sufficiently proves that this species of the leprosy 

 was infectious; and, for the reasons before assigned, could be no other than 

 venereal; for how the true leprosy should be prevented by such means, will be, 

 I believe, impossible for any person to determine. 



There yet remains one very considerable symptom of the venereal malady to 

 take notice of, because it is considered the most remarkable in that disease, 

 which is the falling of the nose ; but since it has been already proved, that this 

 disease, when it had arrived to such a pitch, as to discover itself by those 

 direful symptoms as are the immediate forerunners of this, was by the ancients 

 confounded with the leprosy, and called by that name, it must be among the 

 symptoms of that disease we are the most likely to meet with it, if any such 

 thing as the falling of the nose was known among them. Now the most likely 

 method of coming to a certain knowledge of the infallible symptoms of the 

 leprosy of the ancients, in its more confirmed state, is to consult the examina- 

 tions those unhappy persons were obliged to undergo, before they were de- 

 barred the conversation of human society, and committed to close confinement: 

 but this being a thing some ages since laid aside, no author that I know of 

 having the particular history of it, and somewhat of it being absolutely neces- 

 sary in this design, I shall do it as briefly as I can from what remains I have 

 met with in records, and other scattered papers. 



First then, after the persons appointed to examine the diseased, had com- 

 forted them, by telling them that this distemper might prove a spiritual advan- 

 tage; and if they were found to be leprous, it was to be considered as their 

 purgatory in this world, and though they were denied the world, they were 

 chosen of God ; the person was then to swear to answer truly to all such ques- 

 tions as they should be asked ; but the examiners were very cautious in their 

 inquiries, lest a person that was not really leprous should be committed, which 

 they esteemed an almost unpardonable crime; they considered the signs as uni- 

 vocal, which properly belonged to that disease, or equivocal, which might be- 



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