[147] “Morbus contagiosus, cutis crassa, rugosa, aspera, unctuosa, pilis destituta; extremis artubus anæsthesia; facies tuberibus deformis; vox rauca et nasalis.” Synopsis Nosologiæ Methodicæ (1772), p. 369.
[148] Class III., Order IV., Genus VIII. Elephantiasis; (1) Skin thick, livid, rugose, tuberculate; (2) Insensible to feeling; (3) Eyes fierce and staring; (4) Perspiration highly offensive. Species I. (Tubercular or Arabian Leprosy of authors.) “(1) Tubercles chiefly on the face and joints; (2) Fall of the hair except from the scalp; (3) Voice hoarse and nasal; contagious and hereditary.” Good’s Physiological System of Medicine (1817), pp. 257, 258.
[149] De Causis et Signis Morborum, p. 69. (Leipsic, edit. of 1735).
[150] The disease is still designated in different parts of Asia and Africa by the same terms, more or less slightly changed. In his Travels in Africa, Egypt, and Syria (p. 332), Browne speaks of elephantiasis under the local designation of dzudham; Niebuhr says it is still named in Arabia and Persia dsjuddam and Madsjuddam. (Pinkerton’s Collection of Voyages and Travels, vol. x. p. 170.) In Morocco it is called at the present day Jeddem and Murd Jeddem. (Jackson’s Account of the Empire of Morocco.)
[151] The remark in the text applies to nearly all the numerous Latin versions made from the Arabic. It is proper, however, to add, that the translator of the works of Haly Abbas has so far avoided the error alluded to, by translating the Juzam of his author by elephanta. With this single exception, the error might otherwise, I believe, be called universal.
[152] The Arabians (i.e. the Latin translators from the Arabians), and their expositors, as was long ago remarked by Eustachius Rudius, and as has been often repeated since, “per Lepram nil aliud intelligunt præter Elephantiasim.”—De Affectibus Externarum Corporis Humani Partium, Venet. 1606, p. 24.
[153] See Bostock’s History of Medicine (New York edition of 1836), pp. 43 and 47, or chapters vi. and vii.
[154] This appropriation of the single term “lepra” for the designation of Greek elephantiasis is still adhered to by some modern authors. Thus Plenck, in his celebrated Nosology of Cutaneous Diseases, denominates (after the example of the translators from the Arabic) the Barbadoes leg “Elephantiasis,” and applies to the Greek elephantiasis the simple term “Lepra.” Hence he defines lepra to be “that disease in which the skin, particularly of the face, becomes rugose and irregular (aspera), and is deformed with large reddish-livid and chinked tubercles (rimosis tuberibus), along with insensibility of the extremities, and the voice raucous and nasal.”—Doctrina de Morbis Cutaneis, quâ hi morbi in suas Classes, Genera, et Species rediguntur (1783), p. 67. See also Schilling in his Commentatio de Lepra (1778), p. 2. etc.
[155] As in the works on Cutaneous Diseases by Turner (Treatise of Diseases incident to the Skin, 1736), p. 2; and Lorry (Tractatus de Morbis Cutaneis), p. 376, etc. etc.
[156] Memoires de la Societé Royale de Medecine for 1782-3, p. 170. Alibert employs this term in his Monographie des Dermatoses (1835), tome ii. p. 270.