THE LEPROSY OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
The Leprosy of the Middle Ages known as Elephantiasis Græcorum, Lepra Arabum, and Lepra tuberculosis, is not yet extinct. It is very curious that whilst Lepra Arabum is the same as Elephantiasis Græcorum or true Leprosy, the Elephantiasis Arabum is a totally distinct disease. The former is the most loathsome and revolting of the many awful and terrible scourges, with which the Almighty, in his wisdom, has seen fit, from time to time, to visit mankind.
It is, I believe, a singular fact, that the Jews, “the chosen people of God,” have a special immunity from the disease, being less predisposed than other races. Dr. V. Carter says that during a period of seventeen years, out of a very large number of cases in Bombay, he had seen only four cases, and but one death among Jews, that is of Elephantiasis Græcorum.
Belcher on “Our Lord’s Miracles,” says that in Tangiers at the present day, the two diseases are found, the Lepra Hebræorum prevailing chiefly among the Jewish residents, and presenting exactly the symptoms as described in Leviticus. On the other hand, in Syria, Elephantiasis Græcorum is unknown among the Jews.
It appears to have been very prevalent in this country; but when, and how it was introduced, is not known. Some certify it was brought back by the Crusaders, being the only thing they ever did bring back. But it existed here long anterior to the days of the first crusade. The City of Bath is said to have originated from an old British King afflicted with Leprosy, who being obliged, in consequence, to wander far from the habitation of men, and being finally reduced to the condition of a swineherd, discovered the medicinal virtues of the hot springs of Bath, while noticing that his pigs which bathed therein were cured of sundry diseases prevailing among them.
The following epigram on King Bladud, who was killed 844, B.C.,—father of King Leir, or Leal, d. 799, B.C.,—was written by a clergyman of the name of Groves, of Claverton:—
“When Bladud once espied some hogs
Lie wallowing in the steaming bogs,
Where issue forth those sulphurous springs,
Since honour’d by more potent kings,
Vex’d at the brutes alone possessing
What ought t’ have been a common blessing,
He drove them, thence in mighty wrath,
And built the mighty town of Bath.
The hogs thus banished by their prince,
Have lived in Bristol ever since.”
Many Lazar or Leper Houses were built in England during the early part of the reign of William the Norman, who founded several.
The medical writers of the 13th and 14th centuries, which include the names of Theodoric, the monk, a distinguished surgeon of Bologna; the celebrated Lanfranc, of Milan and afterwards of Paris; Professor Arnold Bachuone, of Barcelona, reputed in his day the greatest physician in Spain; the famous French surgeon Guy de Chauliac; Bernhard Gordon; and our own countrymen Gilbert, c. 1270; John of Gaddesden, Professor of Medicine in Merton College, Oxford, and Court Physician to Edward II., minutely describe the disease.
It was the custom in those affected days, when a medical man or anyone wrote a book on medicine or a medicinal subject, to call it either a “rose” or a “lily,” as “Rosa Angelica,” “Lilium medecinæ.”
The following description of the malady is from the Lilium medecinæ, by Bernhard Gordon, written about 1305 or 1309. He gives three stages or classes of the disease, viz., the (1) occult, (2) the infallible, and (3) the last, or terminating signs. None of these indications are laid down in Leviticus for the guidance of the Jewish Priests.
(i.) “The occult premonitory signs of Leprosy are, a reddish colour of the face, verging to duskiness; the expiration begins to be changed, the voice grows hoarse, the hairs become thinned and weaker, and the perspiration and breath incline to fœtidity; the mind is melancholic with frightful dreams and nightmare; in some cases scabs, pustules, and eruptions break out over the whole body; disposition of the body begins to become loathsome, but still, while the form and figure are not corrupted, the patient is not to be adjudged for separation; but is to be most strictly watched.”
(ii.) “The infallible signs, are, enlargement of the eyebrows, with loss of their hair; rotundity of the eyes; swelling of the nostrils externally, and contraction of them within; voice nasal; colour of the face glossy, verging to a darkish hue; aspect of the face terrible, and with a fixed look; with acumination or pointing and contraction of the pulps of the ear. And there are many other signs, as pustules and excrescences, atrophy of the muscles, and particularly of those between the thumb and forefinger; insensibility of the extremities; fissures, and infections of the skin; the blood, when drawn and washed, containing black, earthy, rough, sandy matter. The above are those evident and manifest signs, which, when they do appear, the patient ought to be separated from the people, or, in other words, secluded in a Lazar House.”
(iii.) “The signs of the last stage and breaking-up of the disease, are, corrosion and falling-in of the cartilage forming the septum of the nose; fissure and division of the feet and hands; enlargement of the lips, and a disposition to glandular swelling; dyspnœa and difficulty of breathing; the voice hoarse and barking; the aspect of the face frightful, and of a dark colour; the pulse small, almost imperceptible.” Sometimes the limbs drop off, piecemeal or in their entirety.
All the writers agree in urging most earnestly that no one ought to be adjudged a Leper, unless there manifestly appears a corruption of the figure, or, that state indicated as signa infallibilia.