LEPROSY. 
.514 
When a leper was'lick, the pried adminiftered the Sacra¬ 
ment to him, and extreme unction ; and when he died he 
was buried in his hovel, or in the place of interment ap¬ 
propriated for the leprous.” Ogee, Abrege del’Hi/l. de Bre¬ 
tagne, prefixed to the Dial, de Bretagne. 
In molt places thefe miferable outcafts were allowed to 
enter the towns, near which their hovels or lazarettos 
flood, at certain times of the year, especially about Eafter 
and Chriftmas. When they walked, or came into a town, 
they made a noife with their rattles, to warn paflengers of 
their prefence. In (hort, their Situation was truly melan¬ 
choly. The ties of marriage were dilfolved, where one of 
the parties only was affefted ; but they were allowed to 
marry when they could find a leprous companion. They 
were, indeed, allowed the ufufruft of property ; but they 
could neither transfer nor inherit it; they were deemed to 
have Suffered a civil death, and to b e'kors de la loi mondaine. 
Yet not only were thefe laws executed againft multi¬ 
tudes who were affefted with cutaneous difeafes, neither 
properly leprous nor contagious ; but it is even very ques¬ 
tionable whether the true tubercular elephantiafis itSelf, 
any more than the lefs formidable baras alba , or leuce, were 
actually contagious. We have already dated the reafons 
which tend to difprove the infectious nature of the latter. 
The evidence againft the probability of contagioil, in the 
cafe of elephantiafis, reds partly upon the facts which are 
cafually mentioned in more ancient times, and partly upon 
thofe which have been more carefully and correctly ascer¬ 
tained nearer to our own. When we defcend to the early 
ages of Chriftianity, we find thefe terrors perpetuated by 
the laws refpefting lepers, which were at once the effect 
and the caufe of a continuation of the popular opinions; 
but, at the fame time, we find kings and bifhops mixing 
familiarly and frequently with thefe very objefts of legal 
proscription, and condescending to offices which require 
the clofell contaft with their perfons, not only without 
any expreflions of apprehenfion, but without any one re¬ 
corded inftance of the difeafe being So communicated; 
we find, too, that for a term of Several days, during cer¬ 
tain fafts and feftivals, thefe infefted people were actually 
allowed to mix in the towns; fafts which ftand in direft 
contradiftion to the traditional prejudices and laws upon 
the fubjeft. Defcending ftill farther, to the period when 
learning and observation had again enlightened the minds 
of men, we find thefe very prejudices and laws extending 
equally to a numerous tribe of cutaneous diforders which 
we know are not contagious, as to the elephantiafis; an 
error which muft render the accuracy of the opinion, as 
to the contagious quality of the latter, exceedingly ques¬ 
tionable. At the fatne time we difcover the contention 
between observation and pre-conceived opinion in the 
minds of the learned, which almoft breaks forth in the 
admiftion of the truth. Thus Feme!, who adopted the 
common notion of its contagious quality, admits never¬ 
theless, that, from all the observations he has been able to 
make, he has never difcovered a cafe which proved its ex- 
iftence ; and Foreftus, Fabricius, Plater, &c, who ftill held 
the popular opinion, exprefs their afionifhment at fee¬ 
ing the daily commerce between the leprous and the 
healthy, even in married perfons, without any communi¬ 
cation of the difeafe ; So that they are compelled to afcribe 
its origin to certain qualities of the air and the diet. 
When we come to the evidence of our own times, we 
jiave ftill more convincing teftimony of the non-contagi¬ 
ous nature of the tubercular leprofy. Dr. Thomas Heber- 
den, ftill retaining Somewhat of the prejudices of educa¬ 
tion, when fpeaking of the cafes of the difeafe which he 
faw at Madeira, fays, Notwithstanding the juft abhor¬ 
rence which every one ehtertains of this loathfome dii- 
eafe, it certainly is not fo contagious as is commonly ima, 
gined ; and then he relates his oblervafions, which prove 
that it is not at all contagious. “ For I have never heard 
of any one,” he adds, “ who has contrafted the ciiftemper 
by contact of a leper; and, on the contrary, I not only 
am a daily witnefe of communication between lepers and 
other people, without the leaft ill confequences, but know 
feveral inftances where a leprous hufljand, married to a 
found wife, has cohabited with her for a long feries of 
years, and had feveral children by her, without her hav¬ 
ing contrafted the leaft Symptom of the diforder, although 
the children have inherited it; and vice verj'd between a 
leprous wife and found hufband. Med. Tranf. of the Col. 
of Piiyf. vol. i. Still more recently, Dr. Adams has inves¬ 
tigated the nature of elephantiafis, in the fame ifland, 
where there is ftill a lazaretto, near Funchal; and his ob¬ 
servations not only confirm thofe of Dr. Heberden, as to 
the non-contagious nature of the difeafe; but they alfo 
detect other miftakes, which originated probably in the 
terrors of the imagination, when the difeafe had ac¬ 
quired the appellation of fatyriajis (from the acuminated 
ears, flattened nofe, and rugous front) y-namely, that fo 
far from being pofleffed with a libido inexpiebilis, the pro- 
creative appetite and power are gradually deftroyed if the 
difeafe arile in the age of manhood, and never developed 
if it commence before that of puberty. See Adams on 
Morbid Poifons, 2d edit. chap. 18. 
It is true, that, about the middle of the rSth century. 
Dr. Hillary had deferibed the elephantiafis as occurring in 
the Weft Indies, with all the charafteriftics attributed to 
it by the ancients. But the description of that learned- 
phyfician is but too obvioufly a tranfeript of the account 
given by Aretteus, uncorrefted by his perfonal observa¬ 
tion. In this the learned writer affords but one exam¬ 
ple, among a long feries of medical Scholars, in whom au¬ 
thority but too often dimmed the eye of obfervation, or 
diftorted its views. 
If the leprofy of the middle ages, then, were not conta¬ 
gious, whence did it originate and fpread fo widely ? Pro¬ 
bably the hint thrown out by Foreftus, Plater, and others, 
and more fully developed in the excellent treatife of Ray¬ 
mond, already often quoted, may afford an adequate ex¬ 
planation of the facl 5 to wit, that the uncultivated and 
marfhy condition of the foil; the confequent humid and 
miafmatous condition of the atmofphere; the fait, putrid, 
indigeftible aliment, and the frequent Scarcity even of that 
which the phyficaland political diforders of the times 
produced; the infalubrious condition of the towns and 
habitations, both in refpeft to bad fituation, want of clean- 
linefs, and other pernicious circumftances ; in flrort, thefe 
combined evils, which appear to have exifted in thofe 
times and countries where the leprofy, among other fre¬ 
quent and diftreffing maladies, prevailed, were, in all pro¬ 
bability, the fources from which thefe cacheftic difeafes 
Sprung. 
It appears from the account of Profper Alpinus, a pro- 
feflor of Pavia, who vifited Egypt late in the Sixteenth 
century, that both the lepra and elephantiafis of the Greeks 
were common among the poor at that period; and he at¬ 
tributes them to the caufes above mentioned : “They are 
compelled through poverty,” he fays, “to drink muddy 
and femi-putrid water; they eat the flefh of camels and 
beef, and filh falted and half putrid, caught in the marlhes 
and lakes ; but they principally live upon a fort of cheefe, 
immoderately falted and femi-putrid, which is fold at a 
very low price :” a diet very much refembling that for¬ 
merly ufed on (hip-board in long voyages; when, as we 
have been informed, the falted provilion, which had been 
Sometimes two years in ca(k, emitted an almoft intolerable 
flench during its maceration, before being cooked. 
From the fifth century, when the empire at length fell 
under the repeated aflaults of the northern invaders, to 
the tenth, the fined parts of Europe lay in a flate of de- 
vaftation ; little cultivation was praftifed, all the arts were 
neglefted or loft, and clothing, habitations, and food, were 
alike infufficient and unwholefome ; and for three centu¬ 
ries more this defplation was increafed, if polfible, by the 
inceffant wars that were waged. There were fourteen 
plagues in the fourteenth century, with intervals of but 
fix years between each ; and frequent famines. The food 
confided, even in England, at a later period, of much falted 
provilion. 
