A most severe disease, to which the bodies of the Jews were very subject, was the Leprosy. Its signs recorded in the holy scriptures are chiefly these. Pimples arose in the skin; the hair was turned white; the plague (or sore) in sight was deeper than the skin, when the disease had been of long standing; a white tumour appeared in the skin, in which there was quick flesh; the foul eruptions gained ground daily, and at length covered the whole surface of the body. And the evil is said to infect, not only the human body, but also the cloaths and garments, nay (what may seem strange) utensils made of skins or furs, and even the very walls of the houses. Wherefore there are precepts laid down for cleansing these also, as well as the lepers.

Medical authors are of different opinions concerning the contagion of this disease. And whereas neither the Arabian nor Greek physicians, who have treated largely of the leprosy, have given the least hint of this extraordinary force of it, whereby it may infect cloaths and walls of houses; the Rabbin doctors dispute, whether that which seized the Jews, was not intirely different from the common leprosy; and they all affirm, that there never appeared in the World, a leprosy of cloaths and houses, except only in Judea, and among the sole people of Israel.

For my part, I shall now freely propose, what I think most probable on the subject. One kind of contagion is more subtile than another; for there is a sort, which is taken into the body by the very breath; such as I have elsewhere said to exist in the plague, small pox, and other malignant fevers. But there is another sort, which infects by contact alone; either internal, as the venom of the venereal disease; or external, as that of the itch, which is conveyed into the body by rubbing against cloaths, whether woollen or linnen. Wherefore the leprosy, which is a species of the itch, may pass into a sound man in this last manner; perhaps also by cohabitation; as Fracastorius has observed, that a consumption is contagious, and is contracted by living with a phthisical person, by the gliding of the corrupted and putrefied juices of the sick into the lungs of the sound man.[47] And AretÆus is of the same opinion with regard to the Elephantiasis, a disease nearly allied to the Leprosy: for he gives this caution, “That it is not less dangerous to converse and live with persons affected with this distemper, than with those infected with the plague; because the contagion is communicated by the inspired[48] air.”

But here occurs a considerable difficulty. For Moses says, “If in the leprosy there be observed a white tumour in the skin, and it have turned the hair white in it, and there be quick flesh within the tumour; it is an old leprosy in the skin of his flesh. But if the leprosy spread broad in the skin, and cover the whole skin of the diseased from his head even to his feet, the person shall be pronounced[49]
clean.” But the difficulty contained
in this passage will vanish, if we suppose, as it manifestly appears to me, that it points out two different species of the disease; the one in which the eroded skin was ulcerated, so that the quick flesh appeared underneath; the other, which spread on the surface of the skin only in the form of rough scales. And from this difference it happened, that the former species was, and the latter was not, contagious. For these scales, being dry and light like bran, do not penetrate into the skin; whereas the purulent matter issuing from the ulcers infects the surface of the body. But concerning the differences of cuticular diseases, I heartily recommend to the reader’s perusal, what Johannes Manardus, equally valuable for his medical knowledge and the purity of his Latin, has written upon the subject.[50]

There is no time, in which this disease was not known; but it was always more severe in Syria and Egypt, as they are hotter countries, than in Greece and other parts of Europe; and it is even at this day frequent in those regions. For I have been assured by travellers, that there are two hospitals for the leprous alone in Damascus. And there is a fountain at Edessa, in which great numbers of people affected with this cuticular foulness wash daily, as was the ancient custom.

Moreover we read the principal signs, which occur in the description of the Mosaic leprosy, excepting only the infection of the cloaths and houses (of which by and by) recorded by the Greek Physicians. Hippocrates himself calls the ?e??? or white leprosy F??????? ??s?? the Phoenician disease.[51] For that the word f?????? ought to be read F???????], appears manifestly from Galen in his Explicatio linguarum Hippocratis; where he says that F??????? ??s?? is a disease which is frequent in Phoenicia and other eastern regions.[52] In the foregoing chapter I said that the Leprosy (Leuce) and the Elephantiasis, were diseases of great affinity:[53] in confirmation of which notion the same Galen observes, that the one sometimes changes into the other.[54] Now these two distempers are no where better described than by Celsus, who lived about the time of Augustus CÆsar, and having collected the works of the principal Greek writers in physic and surgery, digested them into order, and turned them into elegant Latin with great judgment. Thus he describes the leprous diseases. Three are three species of the Vitiligo. It is named ??f??, when it is of a white colour, with some degree of roughness, and is not continuous, but appears as if some little drops were dispersed here and there; sometimes it spreads wider, but with certain intermissions or discontinuities. The ??a? differs from this in colour, because it is black, and like a shadow, but in other circumstances they agree. The ?e??? has some similitude with the ??f??, but it has more of the white, and runs in deeper: and in it the hairs are white, and like down. All these spread themselves, but in some persons quicker, in others slower. The Alphos and Melas come on, and go off some people at different times; but the Leuce does not easily quit the patient, whom it has seized.[55] But in the Elephantiasis, says the same author, the whole body is so affected, that the very bones may be said to be injured. The surface of the body has a number of spots and tumors on it; and their redness is by degrees changed into a dusky or blackish colour. The surface of the skin is unequally thick and thin, hard and soft; and is scaley and rough: the body is emaciated; the mouth, legs and feet swell. When the disease is inveterate, the nails on the fingers and toes are hidden by the swelling.[56] And the accounts left us by the Arabian physicians, agree with these descriptions. Avicenna, the chief of them, says that the Leprosy is a sort of universal cancer of the whole body.[57] Wherefore it plainly appears from all that has been said, that the Syrian Leprosy did not differ in nature, but in degree only, from the Grecian, which was there called ?e???; and that this same disease had an affinity with the Elephantiasis, sometimes among the Greeks, but very much among the Arabs. For the climate and manner of living, very much aggravates all cuticular diseases.

Now with regard to the infection of the cloaths, it has been found by most certain experiments, not only in the plague, and some other malignant eruptive fevers, as the small pox and measles, but even in the common itch; that the infection, once received into all sorts of furs or skins, woollen, linnen, and silk, remains a long time in them, and thence passes into human bodies. Wherefore it is easy to conceive, that the leprous miasmata might pass from such materials into the bodies of those, who either wore or handled them, and, like seeds sown, produce the disease peculiar to them. For it is well known, that the surface of the body, let it appear ever so soft and smooth, is not only full of pores, but also of little furrows, and therefore is a proper nest for receiving and cherishing the minute, but very active, particles exhaling from infected bodies. But I have treated this subject in a more extensive manner in my Discourse on the Plague.[58] And these seeds of contagion are soon mixed with an acrid and salt humor, derived from the blood; which as it naturally ought, partly to have turned into nutriment, and partly to have perspired through the skin, it now lodges, and corrodes the little scales of the cuticle; and these becoming dry and white, sometimes even as white as snow, are separated from the skin, and fall off like bran. Now, altho’ this disease is very uncommon in our colder climate; yet I have seen one remarkable case of it, in a countryman, whose whole body was so miserably seized by it, that his skin was shining as if covered with snow: and as the furfuraceous scales were daily rubbed off, the flesh appeared quick or raw underneath. This wretch had constantly lived in a swampy place, and was obliged to support himself with bad diet and foul water.

But it is much more difficult to account for the infection of the houses. For it seems hardly possible in nature, that the leprous spots should grow and spread on dry walls, made of solid materials. But upon a serious consideration of the different substances employed in building the walls of houses, such as stones, lime, bituminous earth, hair of animals, and other such things mix’d together; I thought it probable, that they may by a kind of fermentation, produce those hollow greenish or reddish strokes in sight lower than the wall (or within the surface)[59] which, as they in some measure resembled the leprous scabs on the human body, were named the Leprosy in a house. For bodies of different natures, very easily effervesce upon being blended together. Wherefore we may reasonably suppose that this moisture or mouldiness, gradually coming forth and spreading on the walls, might prove very prejudicial to the inhabitants, by its stinking and unwholesome smell, without having recourse to any contagious quality in it. And somewhat analogous to this is pretty frequently observable in our own houses; where, when the walls are plaistered with bad mortar, the calcarious and nitrose salts sweat out upon their surface, of a colour almost as white as snow. The power of inspecting their houses was invested in the priests; who, when they observed this foulness, gave orders first to have the walls of the house scraped all around; and afterwards, if it continued to break out, to pull down the house, and carry the materials out of the city into an unclean place.

I am well aware, that all this is related, as if God himself had struck the house with this plague. But it is well known, that that way of speaking is not uncommon in the jewish history; as in unexpected evils and dreadful calamities, which are sometimes said to be done by the hand of God, tho’ they may be produced by natural causes. Nor can I be easily induced to believe, with some divines, that God, who commanded his people to be always free from every sort of uncleanness, would vouchsafe to work a miracle, in order to inflict this most filthy punishment on any person. Thus much is indubitable, that the precepts of the mosaic law were constituted particularly, to avert the people from idolatry and false religion, and at the same time to keep them clear of all uncleanness.[60] To this end conspired the prohibition of eating blood, carrion, or animals that died spontaneously, swines flesh, and that of several other creatures.[61] For all these meats yield a gross nutriment, which is improper and prejudicial in diseases of the skin.

But in order to close these theological researches with somewhat medical, I am convinced from experience, that there is not a better medicine known against this filthy disease, than the tincture of Cantharides of the London Dispensatory. Its remarkable virtue in this case, is owing to the diuretic quality of these flies. For there is a great harmony between the kidneys and glands of the skin, so that the humors brought on the latter, easily find a way thro’ the former, and are carried off by urine: and on the other hand, when the kidneys have failed in the performance of their functions, an urinous humor sometimes perspires thro’ the cuticular pores. But such cathartics are to be interposed at proper intervals, as are most proper for evacuating thick and acrid humors.

[47] De morbis contagiosis. Lib. ii. Cap. ix.