[202] MS. Medical Annotations, vol. iii. p. 226.
[203] “The Moderator proposed to the session, that, considering that a Gracious Providence had not only delivered the Island and country from the burden and necessity of maintaining and otherwise providing for the poor Lepers, formerly in this Island, but had also put a stop to the spreading of that unclean and infectious disease, so that there is no appearance of the symptoms thereof in any person now in this place, the Session should therefore ordain a day to be set apart for solemn thanksgiving for so great a deliverance throughout this ministry excepting Fowla, which we can have no access to probably to inform. The Session having heard the Moderator’s proposal, were cordially satisfied therewith, and did agree unanimously that a day be set apart for solemn thanksgiving on the above account throughout the bounds of the ministry, excepting Fowla, as above said.” (Extracts from the MS. Session Register of Walls, under date of 17th March 1742.) The 19th May 1742 was held as the day of thanksgiving, as appears from a subsequent entry.
[204] Færoæ et Færoa Reserata (London, 1659), pp. 310, 311.
[205] Mackenzie’s Travels in Iceland during the summer of the year 1810; or Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, vol. viii. pp. 202, 203.
[206] Von Troil’s Letters on Iceland, p. 123; Barrow’s Visit to Iceland in the summer of 1834, pp. 289 and 294.
[207] Pontoppidan’s Natural History of Norway, containing an account of its Climate, etc. etc. (London translation, 1755), pp. 261, 262.
[208] See Wellhaven’s account, extracted from the Transactions of the Stockholm Society, vol. iii. pp. 188-200, into Hunefeld’s “Essay on Radesyge,” pp. 38-56.
[209] See pp. 110-117 of the excerpta in Hensler’s learned work, Vom Abenländischen Aufsatze im Mittelalter. (Hamburg, 1790.)
[210] The disease seems to be noticed under the name of Skyrbjugr in some of the oldest Iceland records. (See Olassen’s Islansk Urtagaard Bok, p. 172; and Back, in Von Troil’s Letters on Iceland, p. 324.) Munch and Hunefeld suggest, with no great probability, that it might have been carried to the north by the expeditions which, during the ninth and tenth centuries, were made upon the Norman coast by Rolf and others. (See Hunefeld’s Radesyge oder das Scandinavische Syphiloid, p. 57.)
[211] I have already referred to Bartholin in relation to its former prevalence in the Faroe Isles and Iceland. Writing in 1672, he states that in these parts leprosy “fuisse olim familiarem” (de morbis Biblicis in Mis. Med. p. 41). Jonas, Pastor of Hitterdale in Iceland, wrote in 1662 to the celebrated Sir Thomas Browne, “Nullus elephantiasi vel abominabilior vel pestilentior hic existimatur, et tamen postremo hoc seculo pavendus se diffundit.” (Wilkin’s edition of Sir Thomas Browne’s Works, including his Life and Correspondence, vol. iv. p. 261.)