[2]. The contagiousness of Leprosy was held in universal belief up to the seventeenth century, when certain writers on the subject began to question the validity of a doctrine which had been handed down to them through successive ages, by all the early observers of the Jewish, Egyptian, Arabian, Grecian, and Hindoo countries, and the view then advanced has been confirmed by the report of the Committee recently appointed by the College of Physicians, who state that:—“The all but unanimous conviction of the most experienced observers in different parts of the world, is quite opposed to the belief that leprosy is contagious or communicable by proximity or contact.”
On the other hand we have to consider the testimony afforded us by the shrewd and intelligent teachers of ancient times. Thus, Aretæus believed it to be as contagious as the plague, and like it communicable by respiration; and Œtius, following Archigenes, thought that “the air became contaminated through the effluvia of the sores.” Avicenna believed leprosy to be contagious in the general sense of that term; Avenzoar by contact; Haly Abbas and Alsaharavius through the respiration; and Rogerius “per coitum.”
[These interesting facts are taken from an able article in the Lancet, February 9, 1867.]
[3]. Pliny tells us that the priests of Cybele, the mother of the gods had sharp stones with which they cut themselves in their extasies. Catullus says, that Atys emasculated himself with such an instrument.
The Rabbinical law stands thus: “we may circumcise with anything, even with a flint, with crystal (glass) or with anything that cuts, except with the sharp edge of a reed, because the enchanters make use of that, or it may bring on a disease.” Again we have the evidence of Leutholf that the Æthopians used stone knives for circumcision in his time, 1581. Speaking of the Alnajah[Alnajah], an Æthopian race, he says:—“Alnajah gens Æthiopum cultris lapideis circumcisionem peragit.”
Mr. E. B. Tylor in his “Researches into the Early History of Mankind,” has suggested as the probable reason why stone was used as a cutting instrument, that it was less likely to cause inflammation than either bronze or iron. And Pliny states that the mutilation of the priests of Cybele was done with a sherd of Samian ware to avoid the same danger.
[4]. Travels in Africa, Egypt, and Syria, from the year 1792 to 1798, p. 347. London, 1799.
[5]. Travels in Nubia, by the late John Lewis Burckhardt, p. 332. London, 1819.
[6]. “As for Medicine, something of it must have been understood in that age, though it was so far from perfection, that, according to Celsus, (book i.) what concerned diet was invented long after by Hippocrates. The accidents of life make the search after remedies too indispensable a duty to be neglected at any time; accordingly, he tells us, that the Egyptians, who had many medicinal plants in their country, were all Physicians, and perhaps he might have learnt his own skill from his acquaintance with that nation.
“The state of war in which Greece lived, required a knowledge in the healing of wounds, and this might make him breed his princes, Achilles, Patroclus, Podalirius and Machaon, to the science; what Homer thus attributes to others he himself knew, and he has given us reason to believe, not slightly, for if we consider his insight into the structure of the human body, it is so nice, that he has been judged by some to have wounded his heroes with too much science; or, if we observe his cure of wounds, which are the accidents proper to an epic poem, we find him directing the chirurgical operations, sometimes infusing lenitives, at other times bitter powders, when the effusion of blood required astringent qualities.”—Pope’s Essay on the Character of Homer.