Sketches from the history of medicine, ancient and modern / An oration delivered before the Hunterian Society

by W. Sedgwick Saunders

Now the learned of that day were seekers after wisdom wherever it was to be found; and moreover, as the fame of Solomon was co-extensive with the then existing world, so acute an observer as the founder of the Grecian law could not fail to use the materials which the wide spread knowledge of the Jewish kings sayings and doings had placed within his reach.

Every Jew was required to read the law, or hear it read, once a year—each individual therefore became a living depository of its truths, and, consequently, a somewhat competent teacher of those who might desire to be instructed in such matters.

Moses then comes before us as the first writer, and the first lawgiver; and we shall now proceed to show that to these titles he added the still greater distinction of being the first physician, and promulgator of sanitary precautions.

At present, however, I will not further intrude upon your patience, but leaving his claims where I have placed them, pass on to the consideration of the character of the laws themselves;—and here we arrive at a body of enactments so excellent, so well adapted, not only to the requirements of a nomadic people wandering in a wild country, but to that same people when they subsequently became dwellers in cities, and suffered all the encumbrances of a more advanced civilization. Moses made laws for all times and for all communities, general as well as particular, reaching the nation through every individual member thereof; his rules for the preservation of health embraced the consideration of personal cleanliness enforced as a religious obligation in order that he might thereby enlist the unvarying co-operation of the priesthood.

In a climate incentive to animal enjoyments he placed strict barriers for the preservation of chastity, and decreed that matters relating to sexual intercourse should be under the surveillance of the priest; directions were also given to the menstruous woman, and for her conduct during pregnancy and in childbed. The ordinance of circumcision was devised not alone for ablutionary purposes, but for other well understood objects conducive to purity. Further, it was directed how the man should order himself in affections of the virile organs; and more emphatically, what he was bound to observe when the terrible leprosy afflicted him. In such a calamity he was compelled to withdraw from his house, to be separated from society, and present himself to the priest at various periods during the progress of the disease; he was also to remain in a cheerless exclusion, where, if by chance any unwary passenger came in sight, the sufferer was commanded to cry aloud, unclean! unclean! When convalescence and health returned, the priest pronounced him cured of his leprosy, and he was then permitted to return to his home; but if the leprosy was supposed to cling to the habitation, that, too, was subjected to isolation, and in some instances to total destruction.

The same precautions obtain in our own times, although nearly 3400 years have elapsed since they were first insisted upon by Moses.

Thus, we are told by Dr. Thompson, an eminent American writer on the Holy Land (where he resided many years), that lepers are everywhere regarded as unclean, and that at Jerusalem (where there is always a considerable number of them) a separate quarter in the city is assigned to them, to which they are rigidly confined. Dr. Thompson says: “I have seen them cast out of the villages where they resided, and no healthy person would touch them, eat with them, or use any of their clothes or utensils, and even the Arab tent dwellers cast them out of camp. The leper beggars stand apart, and never attempt to touch you, even as it was in the time of the Saviour, when the ten lepers stood afar off and lifted up their voice of entreaty.”

The same writer furnishes us with the following graphic description, which, as coming from an eye witness, we have deemed worthy of notice:—

“Sauntering down the Jaffa road, on my way to the Holy City, I was startled by the sudden apparition of a crowd of beggars, sans eyes, sans nose, sans hair, sans everything; they held up their handless arms, unearthly sounds gurgled through throats without palates, and, in a word, I stood horrified, when, for the first time, I found myself face to face with a leper.” He then goes on to say: “For many years I have sought to get at the mystery of its origin, but neither books nor learned physicians have thrown any light upon it. I have suspected that this remorseless enemy originates in some self-propagating animalcules, and thus I can conceive the possibility of the contagion reaching the walls of a dwelling. No one has spoken with authority, as to what it proceeds from or how it is generated.

“New born babes of leprous parents are often as pretty and healthy in appearance as other children, but the ‘scab’ comes on by degrees, the hair falls off, joint after joint of the fingers and toes shrink up, the gums are absorbed, and the teeth fall out and disappear; the nose, the eyes, the palate are slowly consumed, and finally the wretched victim sinks into the earth under a disease beyond the control of medicine, which cannot even mitigate its tortures.