The physicians of leper hospitals have left behind a great number of medical documents bearing on the characteristics of the disease, but their observations are so confused that we can only conclude that they considered all cutaneous maladies as belonging to the same constitutional vice.
They recognized, however, the ladrerrie (disease arising from measly pork), by the following symptoms, the same being laid down by Guy de Chauliac:
“Eyelids and eyebrows swollen, falling of eye-lashes and eyebrows, which are replaced by a finer quality of hair; ulceration of septum of the nose, odor of ozoena, granulated tongue, fœtid breath, painful breathing, thickening and hardness of the lips, with fissures and lividity of same; gums tumefied and ulcerated; furfuraceous scales in the hair, purple face, fixed expression, hideous aspect; forehead smooth and shiny like a horn; pustules on face; veins on chest much developed; breasts hard.”
“Thinness of muscles of the hand, especially thumb and index finger; lividity and cracking of the nails; coldness of the extremities; presence of a serpiginous eruption; insensibility of the legs, collections of nodosities around the joints; under the influence of cold elevations appeared on the cutis, making it appear like goose-skin.”
“Sensation of pricking, ulcerations of skin; sleep uneasy, fetidity of sweat; feeble pulse, bad odor of blood, which is viscid and oily to the touch and gritty after incineration, likewise of a violet black color.”
The contagious characteristic of leprosy through sexual relation was noticed by physicians attached to hospitals, and was the subject of police restriction by public sanitary officers. Thus in the thirteenth century the celebrated Roger Bacon, surnamed the admirable doctor, wrote that commerce with a leprous woman could be followed by very serious consequences. This opinion was corroborated by a physician of the University of Oxford, his contemporary John of Gaddsen, and by the observations of Bernard Gordon, a celebrated practitioner of Montpellier. We all know the history of a Countess who came to be treated for leprosy at Montpellier, when a Bachelor in Medicine charged with the task of dressing her sores, fell desperately in love with the leper lady, and from his amours contracted most serious cutaneous disease.
At this period the leprosy had already begun to assume a venereal type of marked character, and many prostitutes suffered from attacks. As we all are aware, Jean Manardi, an Italian doctor, has fully expressed his opinion on this subject. In a letter addressed to a friend, Michel Santana, one of the first specialists who treated pox, Manardi remarks: “This disease has attacked Valencia, in Spain, being spread broadcast by a famous courtesan, who, for the price of fifty crowns, accorded her favors to a nobleman suffering from leprosy. This woman having been tainted, in her turn contaminated all the young men who called on her, so that more than four hundred were affected in a brief space of time. Some of these, having followed the fortunes of King Charles into Italy, carried and spread this cruel malady in their track.”
Another Italian physician, Andre Mathiole, likewise shows the identity of leprosy with syphilis,—in the following terms: “Some authors have written that the French have taken this disease from impure commerce with leprous women while traversing the mountains of Italy.”[30]
We could easily multiply such citations to complete the facts observed by Fernel and Ambroise Pare in France, and also by many Italian physicians, from whence it would be easy to understand why Manardi came to the following conclusion: “Those who have connection with a woman who has had recent amours with a leper, a courtesan in whose womb the seeds of disease may linger, sometimes contract leprosy and at other times suffer from other maladies of a more or less serious nature, according to their predispositions.”