A knowledge of the laws and customs of the Jews in all probability never reached, or at least certainly never influenced, the opinions of the inhabitants of Tonquin—a kingdom which was formerly a part, and long a tributary, of China, and where the general religion is the idolatry of Fo and of Lanzo, with sects of the literati or followers of Confucius;[329] yet in that country those infected with leprosy are treated on the same principles of separation from the general community as we find applied to them in other and distant districts. “In Tonquin, leprosy is so common,” says Richard in his history of that country, “that there are pieces of land assigned where those attacked by it must reside. They are shut out from society; and it is even lawful to kill them if they enter cities or towns.”[330] In a country like Tonquin, it is difficult to conceive how laws and usages of this kind could have originated in anything except a belief in the contagious nature of the disease, as derived from the observation of its mode of diffusion. At all events, the old institutions and customs of the different kingdoms of Europe, in regard to lepers, seem all to have been originally founded on such a belief in the possibility of the contagious communication of this dreadful and dreaded disease from the sick to the healthy. These institutions and customs I propose now to sketch very briefly, and that principally as they bear upon the usages formerly observed towards lepers in England and Scotland. I shall consider them as they refer to—1. The separation of the infected from the general intercourse of society; 2. The laws prohibiting their entrance into towns; and 3. The restrictions under which they were placed as inmates of the hospitals.
Separation of Lepers from the General and Healthy Community.
After all that I have already had occasion to state relative to the objects of the leper hospitals, and the selection of the infected, it is almost unnecessary to add that in Great Britain, as upon the Continent,[331] lepers were obliged, either by law or usage, to seclude themselves from society when once the disease was discovered upon their persons.
The chancery warrant of Edward IV., quoted in the Second Part of these papers, speaks of the retirement of a leper from society as a matter of custom and duty, and empowers the sheriff of the county to remove the suspected person to a secluded place, as is the usage (prout moris est), provided the actual existence of the disease was made out.[332]
There exist in the old records of Scotland both local and general enactments enforcing the retirement and seclusion of lepers. The Scottish “Burrow Lawes” (Leges Burgorum) are generally allowed to have been drawn up as early as the twelfth century.[333] They are a code intended apparently for the government of the four first royal burghs of Scotland, viz. Berwick, Roxburgh, Edinburgh, and Stirling. Their sixty-fourth chapter contains some regulations regarding “lippermen.” The first of these regulations provides in the following terms for the lodgment in hospital and sustenance of the “lippermen” of the burghs:[334]—
“Gif ony man dwelland or borne in the King’s Burgh is striken with leprosie, and hes substance and geir of his awin to sustaine and cleath himselfe, he sall be put in the hospitall of that burgh quhere he dwells. And gif he hes na thing to liue upon, the burgesses of that burgh sall make ane collection amongst them, for meat and claith to him; and that collection sall be the summe of twentie shillinges.”[335]
The canons of the Church of Scotland, as drawn up or authorised by the provincial ecclesiastical councils held at Perth in the years 1242 and 1269, speak of those attacked by leprosy in this country, as being “separated from society in accordance with general custom (de consuetudine generali a communione hominum separantur) and retired to secluded situations.”[336]
I have already, in Part II., quoted a clause from the acts of the Perth Parliament of 1427, empowering and enforcing the dignitaries and officers of the church to search diligently in their parish visitations for any persons affected with leprosy, and to commit them to the keeping of either the civil or ecclesiastical authorities, according as they happened to be “Clerkes” or “Seculars.”
Prohibitions against the Infected entering Towns.