454 
NOTES TO THE 
nun and Lepra Arabum must be regarded as synonymous terms, 
and elephantiasis in some parts of Europe is still spoken of as 
lepra. It was under the popular name of leprosy that elephan- 
tiasis spread as an epidemic throughout England, Wales, Ireland, 
and Scotland, and had its home in Great Britain for fifteen cen- 
turies." It is stated by authors that the lepers are the type of 
the satyrs of the poets ; this idea was remarkably illustrated by a 
case which came under the treatment of Professor Erasmus 
Wilson. He then continues as to the cause. " The danger is 
greatest at the nutritive period of life, when growth is active, and 
when the organization is busily attracting from without air and 
food in abundant quantities and with considerable energy. It 
may therefore be assumed that in certain countries, the cause, 
whether atmospheric or telluric, is constantly present, and that 
all that is necessary to give origin to the disease is a predisposi- 
tion engendered by debility proceeding from whatever cause." 
There is another kind of leprosy, the Lepra Alphos of the 
Greeks, or common white leprosy. It is an eruption of the in- 
tegument, distinguished by the presence of a white scale looking 
as if it were stuck upon the skin like a wafer, and of a circular 
figure. I have in my library a remarkable book by Eichard 
Mead, entitled, Meclica Sacra, 1749. Dr. Mead here gives diag- 
noses of the maladies which affected Job, Saul, Hezekiah, Nebu- 
chadnezzar, &c. His account of the leprosy of the Jews is ex- 
ceedingly interesting. He takes his text from Leviticus, chap, 
xiii, 14, and admires the sanitary regulations laid down by 
Moses. He seems to consider that the disease under which 
Job suffered was Elephantiasis Grtecorum. 
The Black Death of a.d. 1348. — I cannot here resist giving 
a short account of this terrible disease, which, like the leprosy, 
has now happily ceased to exist in England. When examining 
the monuments in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey, I found 
in the south cloister, on the large tombstone of Abbas Du Blois 
who died a.d. 1100, the following inscription, which has 
been cut in since my father's reign as dean. Dr. Stanley has 
caused to be recorded that, under this very stone lie the 
lemains of " twenty-six monks of Westminster, who died of the 
black death in 1348." Being desirous of knowing something 
about the " black death," I consulted my learned friend. Signer 
Valetta, who writes me : — " The black death of 1348 must have 
been the same wdiich, coming from Asia, ravaged Italy, killed 
the famous Laura of Petrarch, and was the theme of the famous 
Decameron of Boccaccio, that is to say, of the ' one hundred 
novels ' told in ten days by a party of ladies and gentlemen in a 
