SECTION I.

ARCHÆOLOGICAL ESSAYS

BY THE LATE

SIR JAMES Y. SIMPSON, BART.

M.D., D.C.L.

ONE OF HER MAJESTY’S PHYSICIANS FOR SCOTLAND, AND PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE

AND MIDWIFERY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

EDITED BY

JOHN STUART, LL.D.

SECRETARY OF THE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES OF SCOTLAND

VOL. II.

EDINBURGH

EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS

PUBLISHERS TO THE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES

MDCCCLXXII

_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME II.

PAGE

I. ON LEPROSY AND LEPER HOSPITALS IN SCOTLAND AND

ENGLAND 1

Communication read before the Medico-Chirurgical

Society of Edinburgh, 3d March 1841, and printed

in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal

(vol. lvi. p. 301; vol. lvii. p. 121).

[Additional Notes by Joseph Robertson, LL.D.]

II. NOTES ON SOME ANCIENT GREEK MEDICAL VASES FOR

CONTAINING LYKION; AND ON THE MODERN USE OF THE

SAME DRUG IN INDIA 185

Read to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 26th

February 1852. Proc. vol. i. p. 47.

Reprinted separately in 1856, and “Inscribed to Dr.

Sichel of Paris.” Edinburgh: Sutherland and Knox.

III. WAS THE ROMAN ARMY PROVIDED WITH MEDICAL

OFFICERS? 197

Printed as a Pamphlet, at Edinburgh, 1856 (Sutherland

and Knox), and “Inscribed to James Pillans, Esq.,

F.R.S.E., Professor of Humanity in the University

of Edinburgh, etc. etc., as a Small Tribute of sincere

Esteem from an Old and Attached Pupil.”

_With One Plate._

IV. NOTICES OF ANCIENT ROMAN MEDICINE-STAMPS, ETC.,

FOUND IN GREAT BRITAIN 229

Communicated to the Monthly Journal of Medical

Science, January, March, and April 1851.

_With Four Plates._

V. ANTIQUARIAN NOTICES OF SYPHILIS IN SCOTLAND 301

Communicated to the Epidemiological Society of London,

1862. Trans. vol. i. part ii.

Reprinted privately at Edinburgh (Edmonston and

Douglas), “Inscribed to the most learned Physician

of Modern Times, James Copland, Esq., M.D.,

Author of the Dictionary of Practical Medicine.”

ON LEPROSY AND LEPER HOSPITALS

IN SCOTLAND AND ENGLAND.[1]

PART I.

Few subjects in pathology are more curious, and at the same time more

obscure, than the changes which, in the course of ages, have taken place

in the diseases incident either to the human race at large, or to

particular divisions and communities of it.

A great proportion of the maladies to which mankind are liable have, it

is true, remained entirely unaltered in their character and consequences

from the earliest periods of medical history down to the present day.

Synocha, Gout, and Epilepsy, for instance, show the same symptoms and

course now, as the writings of Hippocrates describe them to have

presented to him upwards of two thousand years ago. The _generatio de

novo_ of a really new species of disease “is (says Dr. Mason Good[2])

perhaps as much a phenomenon as a really new species of plant or of

animal.” Dr. Good’s remark is probably too sweeping in its principle;

for, if necessary, it might be easy to show that, if the particular

diseases of particular animal species are liable to alteration at all,

they must necessarily alter more frequently than those animal species

themselves. In pursuing such an inquiry, the pathologist labours under

comparative disadvantages. The physiologist can, by the aid of

geological research, prove that the individual species of plants and

animals inhabiting this and other regions of the earth, have again and

again been changed. The pathologist has no such demonstrative data to

show that, in the course of time, the forms and species of morbid action

have undergone great mutations, like the forms and species of normal

life. But still we have strong grounds for believing that, in regard to

our own individual species alone, the diseases to which mankind are

subject have already undergone, in some respects, marked changes within

the historic era of medicine. Since the first medical observations that

are now extant on disease were made and recorded in Greece, various new

species of human maladies have, there can be little doubt, made their

original appearance. I need only allude to small-pox, measles, and

hooping-cough. Again, some diseases which prevailed formerly, seem to

have now entirely disappeared from among the human race—as, for

example, the Lycanthropia of the Sacred Writings, and of Oribasius,

Aetius, Marcellus, and various old medical authors.[3] Other maladies,

as that most anomalous affection, the English sweating-sickness of the

fifteenth century, have only once, and that for a very short period,

been permitted to commit their ravages upon mankind. And lastly, we have

still another and more extensive class, including maladies that have

changed their geographical stations to such an extent, as to have made

inroads upon whole districts and regions of the world, where they were

formerly unknown, leaving now untouched the localities which, in older

times, suffered most severely from their visitations.

Among this last tribe of diseases no one presents a more curious subject

of inquiry than the European leprosy, or tubercular elephantiasis of the

middle ages. This malady is now almost entirely, if not entirely,

unknown as a native endemic disease on any part of the Continent of

Europe; and yet from the tenth to the sixteenth century it prevailed in

nearly every district of it. Laws were enacted by Princes and Courts to

arrest its diffusion;—the Pope issued bulls with regard to the

ecclesiastical separation and rights of the infected;[4]—a particular

order of Knighthood was instituted to watch over the sick;—and leper

hospitals or lazar-houses were everywhere instituted to receive the

victims of the disease. The number of these houses has certainly been

often erroneously stated, in consequence, as far as I have been able to

trace it, of a strange mistake committed by Ducange, in quoting from

Matthew Paris a passage in which that historian contrasts the respective

possessions belonging in the thirteenth century to the Hospitalarii,

Knights Hospitallers, or Knights of St. John, as they were termed, and

the Knights Templars. The 19,000 lazar-houses in Christendom, as

interpreted by Ducange, mark in Matthew Paris’ work merely the number of

manors or commanderies of the Hospitalarii, and have no reference

whatever to leprosy or lazar-houses.[5] But still that an immense number

of leper-houses existed on the Continent at the period mentioned, is

abundantly shown in many of the historical documents of that age. Louis

VIII. promulgated a code of laws in 1226, for the regulation of the

French leper hospitals; and these hospitals were at that date computed

to amount, in the then limited kingdom of France, to not less than 2000

in number—(_deux mille leproseries_).[6] They afterwards, as is alleged

by Velley,[7] even increased in number, so much so that there was

scarcely a town or burgh in the country that was not provided with a

leper hospital. In his history of the reign of Philip II. Mezeray uses

the same language in regard to the prevalence of leprosy and leprous

patients in France during the twelfth century.[8] Muratori gives a

nearly similar account of the extent of the disease during the middle

ages in Italy;[9] and the inhabitants of the kingdoms of Northern

Europe, equally became its unfortunate victims.[10]

I have no desire, however, to enter at present into the extensive

history of the leprosy of the middle ages, as seen in the different

quarters of Europe. My object is a much more limited and a much more

humble one. I wish only to adduce various evidence to show that the

disease extended to this the most western verge of Europe, and at one

time prevailed to a considerable extent in our own kingdom of Scotland,

which, at the period alluded to, was one of the most remote and

thinly-populated principalities in Christendom. I shall have frequent

occasion, at the same time, to illustrate my remarks by references to

the disease as it existed contemporaneously in England.[11]

In following out the object adverted to, I shall commence by an

enumeration of such leper hospitals as I have detected any notices of in

old Scottish records. The knowledge of the mere existence of most of

these hospitals has been obtained more by the accidental preservation of

charters of casual grants to them than by any historical or traditional

notice of the institutions themselves. The information, therefore, which

I have to offer in regard to most of them is exceedingly slight. The

following meagre notes regarding the two first Lazar or Leper-houses,

Spitals, Spetels, or Spitles,[12] which I shall mention, show the truth

of this remark.

SCOTTISH LEPER HOSPITALS.

_Aldcambus, Berwickshire._—A Leper Hospital existed at Aldcambus, in

the parish of Cockburnspath, Berwickshire, as far back as the reign of

William the Lion.

In the Chartulary of the Priory of Coldingham is preserved a charter by

which that monarch confirms a grant of half a carrucate of land to this

hospital. I shall give a transcript of the charter, which has hitherto

remained unpublished. I do so that it may serve as a fair specimen of

the various similar charter documents to which I shall have occasion to

allude in the course of the following remarks. It is entitled

“Confirmatio donationis Hospitali de Aldcambus facta:”—“Willelmus Dei

gratia Rex Scottorum omnibus probis hominibus totius terre sue Clericis

et laicis salutem. Sciant presentes et futuri me concessisse, et hac

cartâ meâ confirmasse donationem illam, quam David de Quicheswde fecit

Hospitali de Aldcambus et Leprosis ibi manentibus, de illa dimidia

carucata terræ in Aldcambus quam Radulfus Pelliparius tenuit: tenendam

in liberam et puram et perpetuam eleemosinam, cum omnibus libertatibus

et aisiamentis ad predictam terram juste pertinentibus, ita liberé et

quieté sicut carta predicti Davidis testatur: Salvo servicio meo.

Testibus Willelmo de Bosch. Cancellario meo, Waltero Cuming, Davide de

Hastings. Appud Jeddewrith, xvi. die Maij.”[13]

_Aldnestun in Lauderdale._—At Aldneston another leper-house existed.

It was under the control of the Abbey of Melrose. In the Melrose

Chartulary there is preserved a charter headed “Carta Leprosorum de

Moricestun.” In this charter, Walter Fitzallan, Steward of Scotland,

granted to this hospital of Auldnestun and its inmates (Hospitali de

Auldnestun et infirmis fratribus ibidem residentibus), a carrucate and a

half of land in the village of Auldnestun; another carrucate and a half,

which Dame Emma of Ednaham held (tenuit per suas rectas divisas), with

the common pasturage and easement (asiamento) of the forests of

Birkenside and Ligarrdewude (Legerwood), and a right to grind at his

mill without paying multure.[14]

_Kingcase, Ayrshire._—At Kilcais or Kingcase, on a bleak muir in the

parish of Prestwick, and about two miles from the town of Ayr, stood,

for several centuries, an hospital for Lepers. The general tradition of

the surrounding country avers that this hospital was founded by King

Robert the Bruce. In the article on Ayr, recently published by the Rev.

Dr. Auld and Mr. Cuthill, in the New Statistical Account of

Scotland,[15] the foundation charter of Robert Bruce is said to have

been purchased by the Magistrates of that town in 1786. I am obligingly

assured, however, by Mr. Murdoch of Ayr, that no such document is known

to exist among the archives of that town. It is probable that the

hospital existed before the time of Bruce. In a charter to the monastery

of Dalmulin, contained in the Chartulary of Paisley Abbey,[16] and of

the date of the reign of William I. of Scotland, among other lands and

localities in Kyle and the immediate neighbourhood of Kingcase, the term

Spetel-Crag occurs. Now the term Spetel was a prefix applied, both in

Scotland and England, to all hospital lands and possessions, and to

these alone; and history records no other hospital whatever in Kyle,

from which this appellation of Spetel Craigs could be derived. But

whether Bruce was the original founder, or, what is more probable, a

liberal endower of the hospital, we know this at least of the history of

the Kingcase Leper Hospital, that it possessed at one time pretty

extensive lands and property in the parish of Dundonald, and in Kyle

Stewart.[17]

These, like many other hospital grants, came after a time to be

perverted from their original objects of charity, and applied to the

aggrandisement of particular individuals. Thus the family of Wallace of

Newton obtained from James II. a feu-charter of the Kingcase estate of

Spittalshiels, for the annual payment of eight merks Scots, and sixteen

thrave of straw. In reference to this, the land of Spittalshiels has yet

(observes Sir Walter Scott, in a note to his _Lord of the Isles_[18]) to

give, if required, a quantity of straw for the lepers’ beds of Kingcase,

and so much to thatch their houses. Along with Spittalshiels the

Wallaces acquired the office of Hereditary Keeper or Governor of the

Hospital itself, and of the other lands pertaining to it. In the family

of the Wallaces of Craigy this right of patronage and presentation to

Kingcase was long held, with all the remaining endowments of the

hospital. These privileges were exposed at a judicial sale of the estate

of Craigy, and purchased, 1784, by the burgh of Ayr, for £300. The

magistrates, from this right, exact feu-duties from the lands formerly

belonging to Kingcase, to the annual extent of sixty-four bolls oatmeal,

and eight merks Scots money. This revenue has been made over to the

poor’s house of Ayr. In virtue of it the magistrates have the privilege

of presenting a certain number of inmates to this latter

institution.[19]

No records remain as to the original extent of the Kilcais Hospital. The

number of lepers supported was, during the latter years of the

institution, limited to eight. Before the hospital revenues and lands

were despoiled the number might have been greater. The only remnants of

the buildings which are now left consist of the massive side-wall of a

house 36 feet long and 17 wide. This is generally alleged to be the

ruins of the chapel merely of the hospital; and under this view it is

certainly calculated to give us a high opinion of the ancient extent and

endowments of the institution. Sir Robert Gordon, in a description of

Kyle, published in 1654, in Bleau’s _Atlas_, states that the persons

admitted to the charity were then lodged in huts (_tuguria_) in the

vicinity of the chapel.[20]

_Glasgow._—In 1350, in the reign of David II., the Lady of Lochow,

daughter of Robert Duke of Albany, erected a leper hospital at the

Gorbals of Glasgow, near the old Bridge.[21] She endowed this hospital

with some lands and houses in the city. The magistrates of Glasgow seem

to have exercised the privilege both of searching for lepers among the

inhabitants, and of consigning them to this hospital. From the Burgh

Records, presented some time ago by Mr. Smith to the Maitland Club, it

appears that in 1573 the magistrates ordained four persons, named as

lepers, “to be viseit (inspected), and gif they be fund so, to be

secludit of the town to the Hospital at the Brigend.”[22] A similar

edict was issued in regard to two other individuals in 1575,[23] and in

1581 eight more seem to have been dealt with in the same manner.[24] The

Bishops of Glasgow appear also to have had a right to present patients

to the hospital. In 1464, Andrew Muirhead, who then held the bishoprick,

availed himself of the privilege by presenting one patient.

On the 9th August 1589, a report was given in to the magistrates of

Glasgow, stating that six lepers were at that time in the house.[25] As

late as 1664, the ground-rents of this hospital were uplifted by the

water-bailie, an official who, according to an entry in the city records

of Glasgow, was in the custom of giving in annually the number of lepers

in the hospital at the Brigend. This hospital, like that of Kingcase,

was dedicated to the Gallovidian Saint, St. Ninian.

_Edinburgh._—A leper hospital formerly existed at Greenside, which was

then a suburb, and not, as now, a constituent part of the city of

Edinburgh. The history of the hospital and its laws are preserved in the

Town-Council records. In 1584 the city Magistrates issued orders for

finding a commodious place for a leper-house.[26] In 1589, they passed

an Act for building such an institution at Greenside, and apparently

with money granted to them for that purpose, by John Robertson, a

merchant in Edinburgh, and others, in pursuance of some previous

vow.[27] On the 23d November 1591, five leper inhabitants of the city

were consigned to this hospital.[28] Two of the wives of the lepers

voluntarily shut themselves up in the hospital along with their diseased

husbands. I shall afterwards recur to the strict laws which the inmates

were bound to observe. In a charter of rights given to the city in 1636

by Charles I. there are enumerated among the other grants which he

confirms to them, “the lands of old called the Greenside, with the

leper-house and yard situate on the same, arable lands, banks, and

marishes thereof, for the present occupied by the lepers of the said

house.”[29] The hospital, however, does not appear to have been of long

duration. In 1652, the magistrates ordered that the roof of the

leper-house be taken off, and its wood, slates, etc. used to repair the

town milns and other public buildings;[30] and in 1657, a similar

appropriation was made of the stones contained in the walls of the

leper-house, and in the fence around its yard or garden.[31]

_Aberdeen._—In an old manuscript _Description of bothe Touns of

Aberdeen_, by James Gordon, as quoted in the entertaining _Book of Bon

Accord_, the following notice of a leper hospital at Aberdeen

occurs:[32] “Such as go out at the Gallowgate port towards Old Aberdeen,

haff way almost, may see the place where of old stood the lepers’

hospital, called the seick-house, hard by the way syde. To which there

was a chappell adjoyned, dedicated to St. Anna, quhome the Papists

account patronesse of the lepers. The citizens licencit one Mr.

Alexander Galloway, the person of Kinkell, for to build that chappell

anno 1519. Now both these buildings are gone, and scarcely is the name

knowne to many.” “On the 18th August 1574, the Regent Morton, and the

Lords of the Privy-Council commanded the Magistrates of Aberdeen to

uptake fra James Leslie, present possessioure of the croft and myre

pertening to the Lipperfolk, the yeirle dewtie tharof off the five

yeiris bypast; and thairvith, and sic vthir collectioune as may be

hade, to caus the said house be theikkit (thatched, roofed) and reparit

for the resett of the said Lipperfolk in tym cuming: and to caus roup

the said croft and myre, to quha vill giff maist yeirle dewtie tharfor

fra thre yeir to thre yeir: And to caus the haill proffeit to be

employit vpon the upolding of the said hous, and sustentation of the

Liperfolks that salbe tharin.”[33]

In the beginning of the eighteenth century the hospital and grounds were

sold under the direction of the magistrates, and the money received

appropriated to the establishment of a fund for a proposed lunatic

asylum. The leper croft now belongs to King’s College.[34]

_Rothfan, Elgin._—A leper-house seems to have existed from an early

period at Rothfan, near Elgin. John Byseth made a gift to this hospital

at Rothfan of the Church of Kyltalargyn, for the avowed purpose of

maintaining seven lepers, a servant and chaplain. The donor retained to

himself and his successors the privilege of preserving the number

complete, by filling up the vacancies. On his request and presentation,

William, prior of the hospital, was admitted to the church in 1226.[35]

The precise date of Byseth’s charters is not preserved, but they seem to

have been drawn out during the reign of Alexander II. or III. From their

phraseology the hospital evidently was in existence previous to that

time.

The lands pertaining to this hospital are still known under the name of

the Leper Lands,[36] though the institution itself has been long

obsolete.

_Shetland._—Lastly, we have records of several small and temporary

lazar-houses in Shetland. Thus, long ago, Brand (the honest missionary,

as Hibbert terms him) states that in that country the “scurvy sometimes

degenerates into leprosy, and is discerned by hairs falling from the

eyebrows, the nose falling in, etc., which” (he adds), “when the people

come to know, they separate and set them apart for fear of infection,

building huts or little houses for them in the field. I saw the ruines

of one of these houses about half-a-mile from Lerwick, where a woman was

for some years kept for this reason. These scorbutick persons are more

ordinarily in Dunrossness and Delton, and more rare in other

places.”[37]

“Formerly” (says Dr. Edmondston, another and more recent author on the

Shetlands), “when leprosy was very prevalent, the unfortunate

individuals who were seized with it were removed to small huts erected

for the purpose, and there received a scanty allowance of provisions

daily, until the disease put a period to their miserable existence.”[38]

NUMBER OF HOSPITALS, AND EXTENT OF THE DISEASE.

The Scottish lazar-houses that I have thus enumerated, though few in

number, are still sufficient to show that the disease for which they

were instituted was generally diffused over the extent of the kingdom.

Thus, we have found the establishments in question spread from

Berwickshire to Shetland, and from Aberdeen to Ayr. More research than I

have been able to bestow upon the matter would no doubt bring to light

notices of various additional hospitals. In some Scottish towns names

and notices still exist sufficient to lead to the probability of

lazar-houses having formerly existed in them, though that evidence is in

other respects altogether incomplete.

In the immediate neighbourhood of Edinburgh a leper station probably

existed at a date greatly earlier than that of the Greenside Hospital.

In his _Caledonia_,[39] the late excellent antiquary and philologist,

George Chalmers, expresses his belief in the opinion suggested by the

Rev. Mr. White, that the name of the village of Liberton (two miles

south of Edinburgh) is merely a corruption of Liper town,—liper being

the old Scotch term for leprosy; and, as is well known, the letters _p_

and _b_ being constantly interchanged for one another in the composition

and transmutation of words. This idea is certainly in no small degree

countenanced by the circumstance that the lands of Upper Liberton

(Libertune) in some old writs are described under the name of “terrarum

de Spittle town” (Hospital town.)[40]

Besides, the “Oily or Balm Well of St. Catherine’s at Liberton,” had

been long held in high estimation in curing cutaneous diseases, and

still maintained great repute as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries. In his brief but interesting _Cosmography and Description of

Albion_, Boece, Canon of Aberdeen, at the commencement of the sixteenth

century, states that the oil of this well “valet contra varias cutis

scabricies.”—_Historiæ Scotorum_ (1526), p. xi.[41]

J. Monipennie alleges that its oil or “fatness is of a sudain operation

to heal all salt scabs and humors that trouble the outward skin of

man.”[42] Dr. Hare makes mention of it to the same purpose.[43] After

the institution of the monastery of St. Catherine of Sienna (_Scotticé_,

Sheens) on the Burrow Moor, at a short distance south of the city walls

of Edinburgh, the Dominican nuns belonging to it made, in honour of St.

Catherine, an annual solemn procession to the chapel and balm well of

Liberton.[44]

This “oily or balm well” of Liberton was sufficient to excite the

admiration and engage the protective care of the credulous King James

VI. In a curious monograph[45] on the virtues of the well, published at

Edinburgh in 1664, the author, “Mathew Mackaile, Chirurgo-Medicine.”

indulges himself (p. 117) in the following historical eulogium and

anathema in regard to it:—

“His Majesty King James the Sixth, the first monarch of Great Britain,

of blessed memory, had such a great estimation of this rare well, that

when he returned from England to visit this his ancient kingdom of

Scotland in anno 1617, he went in person to see it, and ordered that it

should be built with stones from the bottom to the top, and that a door

and a pair of stairs should be made for it, that men might have the more

easie access unto its bottom for getting of the oyl. This royal command

being obeyed, the well was adorned and preserved, until the year 1650,

when that execrable regicide and usurper, Oliver Cromwell, with his

rebellious and sacrilegious accomplices, did invade this kingdom, and

not only deface such rare and ancient monuments of Nature’s handwork,

but also the synagogues of the God of nature.”

But it is unnecessary to insist further upon such problematical evidence

in regard to the probable extent and prevalence of the disease in

Scotland. A proof of this, of a much stronger character, is afforded by

the simple fact that, as late as the reign of James I. the victims of

the disease were made the subject of a direct and special legislative

enactment in the Scottish Parliament held at Perth in the year 1427. I

shall quote one short clause from this act “anent Lipper Folke”[46] (as

it is termed), to illustrate both the apparent prevalence of the malady

at that time, and this circumstance, that the burghs of the kingdom are

then spoken of as possessing, or obliged to possess, lazar-houses of

their own. The second clause is to the following effect: “Item, that na

Lipper Folke sit to thig (beg) neither in kirk nor kirkzaird, nor other

place within the burrowes, but at their own hospital, and at the port of

the towne and other places outwith the burrowes.”

It is impossible to form any approach as to the number affected in this

country. The hospitals that I have enumerated do not seem calculated to

contain many patients. As we have already seen, that of Ayr contained at

least eight patients; Rothfan, seven; five were admitted into the

Greenside hospital at its first opening in 1591; and in a report of the

Glasgow hospital, submitted to the magistrates in 1589, six lepers were

reported as then belonging to that institution. These data are entirely

inadequate to draw any conclusion from, and the more so, that here, as

in England, the disease was probably more extensively spread during the

eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries than afterwards; and it is

exactly at that remote period that all our Scottish records are most

defective.

In these early times the very words employed to designate the disease

show its extent and severity. Somner, Lye, and Bosworth, in their

several Dictionaries of the old Anglo-Saxon language, all quote the

remarkable expression, “_seo mycle adl_,” “the mickle ail” or great

disease, as signifying “elephantiasis” or “leprosie;” and it is worthy

of observation, in reference to the same point, that the delightful old

French chronicler, Sir John Froissart, who visited Scotland in the time

of Robert II., applies, as we shall afterwards see, the analogous term

of “la grosse maladie” to one noted case of leprosy in this country.

Some further idea may be formed of the frequency of the disease, at

least in the border counties of Scotland, when I state that, before the

year 1200, there existed various hospitals for the exclusive reception

of lepers in the immediately adjoining English counties of

Northumberland, Cumberland, and Durham. Three alone of these hospitals

contained as many as ninety-one lepers in all—viz. the hospital of

Sherburne, near Durham,[47] contained sixty-five; St. Nicholas,

Carlisle,[48] contained thirteen; and Bolton, in Northumberland,

founded, as its charter[49] bears, by Robert de Roos, “pro salute animae

meae et omnium antecessorum et successorum meorum,” was endowed for

other thirteen.

I may here take the opportunity of stating that the labours of different

English antiquaries, and more particularly the investigations of Leland,

Dugdale, and Tanner, into the Monastic History of England, tend to show

that at an early period many leper-houses were scattered over England

and Wales. In searching through the works of these authors, and more

particularly through the late splendid edition of the _Monasticon

Anglicanum_, with the numerous additions of Caley, Ellis, and Bandinel,

I have found references to between eighty and ninety English

lazar-houses.[50]

In the second and third volumes of the _Monasticon Anglicanum_ (1st

edition) above ninety[51] charters or other notices of English hospitals

are published, and of these twenty-one at least were hospitals for the

reception of lepers. Bloomefield[52] mentions eighteen leper-houses in

Norfolk alone; and Taylor,[53] in his _Index Monasticus_, enumerates

twenty in that single county. Six of these were placed in Norwich or its

immediate vicinity, and five at Lynne Regis.

OBJECTS, CHARACTER, AND GOVERNMENT OF THE LEPER HOSPITALS.

The leper hospitals, both in Scotland and elsewhere, were intended

merely as receptacles to seclude the infected, not as houses in which a

cure of them was to be attempted. They were charitable and hygienic

rather than medical institutions.

At the present day tubercular leprosy is still regarded as a disease

which sets at defiance all the powers of the medical art. Our ancestors

had so firm a belief in the same doctrine, that, in the case of one of

the unfortunate wretches who was tried in Edinburgh in 1597 for

witchcraft, amongst the gravest of the accusations brought against the

panel was this, that she (Christian Livingstone) “affirmit that she culd

haill (cure) leprosie, quhilk (the libel adds) the maist expert men in

medicine are not abil to do.” Some of the means of cure she had employed

have never, I am afraid, been allowed a place in any of our

pharmacopœias. I may allude, therefore, as a specimen to one of them

amongst others—viz. (and I quote the words of the libel) “she took a

reid cock, slew it, baked a bannock (cake) with the blude of it, and gaf

(gave) the samyn to the Leper to eat.”[54]

I leave it to the dogmatism of the pharmacologists to decide whether

more potent virtues should be ascribed to this recipe of Christian

Livingstone’s or to that deliberately offered with the same purport by

our celebrated countryman Michael Scott. “It ought to be known” (says

the great Fifeshire philosopher) “that the blood of dogs and of infants

two years old or under, when diffused through a bath of heated water,

dispels the Leprosy without a doubt” (_absque dubio liberat

Lepram_).[55]

The miraculous properties of the relics of saints were in some instances

strongly relied upon as an article of the Materia Medica, fit among

other things to cure this incurable malady. Fosbroke[56] mentions a

fountain near Moissac, described by Peyrat (abbot of that place, in the

fourteenth century), the waters of which were so medicated by the

relics of a saint contained in the neighbouring abbey that the crowds of

lepers who resorted to it bathed and were immediately cured. But the

valued fountain was not sufficiently powerful to avert the disease being

communicated to the monks, or to save them even when once they were

contaminated; and at last, according to the confessions of the abbot, it

was shut up in consequence of some of the order dying of the very malady

which their famed waters could infallibly remove.

In the sequel, when considering the causes of the disease, and the

regulations of medical police, adopted in regard to the infected, I

shall have occasion to speak at length of the strict rules to which the

inmates of most of the leper-hospitals were subjected—not for the sake

of medical treatment, but with the purpose only of preventing the

dissemination of the malady.

Besides being places for the isolation of the infected, the

leper-hospitals of Scotland and England were often, like the

corresponding institutions of the continent of Europe, founded and

endowed as religious establishments; and, as such, they were generally

submitted to the sway of some neighbouring abbey or monastery.

Semler[57] quotes, indeed, a Papal bull, appointing every leper-house to

be provided with its own churchyard,[58] chapel, and ecclesiastics—(cum

cimiterio ecclesiam construere, et proprio gaudere presbyterio)—an

order against the latter part of which the poverty of many of the

hospitals in Great Britain formed a very secure guarantee. The Greenside

Hospital in Edinburgh, being founded at a very late period, partook,

perhaps, less of the character of a religious establishment than most

others in the kingdom.

The rules established for the domestic and religious duties of the

inmates belonging to it, by the commissioners appointed by the

magistrates of the city, were few and simple, viz.—

“That the said persons, and ilk ane (every one) of thame leif (live)

quetlie, and gif (give) na sclander, be banning, sweyring, flyting,

skalding, filthie speaking, or vitious leving, or any oyder way, under

the paynes to be enjoynit by the counsall.

“That thair be appoyntit ane ordinair reider to reid the prayeris evrie

Sabboth to the said lepperis, and ane commodious place appoyntit to the

said reider for that effect.”[59]

Over some of our Scotch lazar-houses, chaplains, and religious officers

with the high-church title of priors, were placed.

The prior of Rothfan Hospital was, at the intercession of the founder of

the house, admitted to the church. There was one chaplain under him.

In the records of the burgh of Prestwick there is an incidental entry,

showing that there was a prior placed over the Kingcase Hospital near

Ayr in 1507, for “George Yong, Prior of Kingiscase, accusyt Thome Greif

of four barrels of beyr, and the said Thomas grantyt 24 shillings, but

denyit ye beer.”[60] We have already seen that there were chapels

annexed to the Kingcase and Aberdeen Hospitals. Our history of the other

lazar-houses in Scotland is so imperfect as not to enable us to state

whether they were equally well provided; but certainly many of the

richer leper and other hospitals in England had, as appears from their

better preserved records, free chapels attached to them, with resident

regular or secular canons. In the Sherburne Leper Hospital, near Durham,

there were, besides the prior, four priests and four attendant

clerks.[61] The hospital of St. Giles, Norwich, was provided with a

master or prior, and an establishment of eight regular canons acting as

chaplains, two clerks, seven choristers, and two sisters; while the only

permanent residents to whose wants they were required to minister were

eight poor bed-ridden subjects![62]

Both the ecclesiastical officers of the leper hospitals, and the leprous

inmates themselves, were in general strictly enjoined, by the foundation

charters and regulations of their institutions, to observe strict

religious formulæ, and especially to offer up prayers for the souls of

the founder and his family. That the duties connected with this last

office were in some instances by no means slight, will be sufficiently

apparent by the following extract from the laws of the leper hospital at

Illeford, in Essex, which I translate from the regulations established

for the house in 1346 by Baldok, Bishop of London:—[63]

“We also command that the Lepers omit not attendance at their church, to

hear divine service, unless prevented by grievous bodily infirmity; they

are to preserve silence there, and hear matins and mass throughout, if

they are able; and whilst there, to be intent on prayer and devotion, as

far as their infirmity permits them. We desire also and command that, as

it was ordained of old in the said hospital, every leprous brother

shall, every day, say for the morning duty a Pater noster and Ave Maria,

thirteen times; and for the other hours of the day respectively, namely,

the first, third, sixth hour of the vespers, and again at the hour of

the concluding service, a Pater noster and Ave Maria seven times; and

besides the aforesaid prayers, each leprous brother shall say a Pater

and Ave thirty times every day for the founders of the hospital and the

bishop of the place, and all his benefactors, and all other true

believers, living or dead; and on the day on which any one of their

number departs from this life, let each leprous brother say in addition,

fifty Paters and Aves, three times, for the soul of the departed, and

the souls of all deceased believers. But if any one shall openly

(_manifeste_) transgress the said rules, or any one of them, for each

transgression let him receive a condign punishment according to the

amount of the offence, from the Master of the said hospital, who is

otherwise called the Prior. But if a leprous brother secretly

(_occultè_) fails in the performance of these articles, let him consult

the priest of the said hospital in the Penitential Court.”

In several of the hospitals the passions of the inmates were endeavoured

to be restrained by the laws laid down by their Superior. Thus the

articles of the leper-house of St. Julian, at St. Albans, contain the

following significant regulations of Abbot Michael _de accessu

Mulierum_. “And since by the access of women scandal and evils of no

slight nature arise, we above all things forbid that any woman enter the

hospital of the brothers, with the exception of the common laundress of

the house, who must be of mature age and discreet manner of life (maturæ

aetatis et bonae conversationis), so that no suspicion can attach to

her. And she must not presume to enter the house at suspicious times,

but at the proper hours, so that her entrance and exit may be seen by

all. But if a mother or sister, or any other honest matron, come there

for the purpose of visiting the infirm, she may have access to the one

with whom she wishes to speak, and this may be done by the permission of

the Custos; without which they are not to enter, whatever may be their

rank. But women of light fame and evil reputation are by no means to

enter the houses.”[64]

The Custos, Master, Dean or Prior, and in some houses the Prioress,[65]

seems in general to have had full control over the leprous inmates of

the hospital. Thus, in the laws which have been transmitted to us of the

Sherburne Hospital, it is laid down that members were to be punished for

disobedience or idleness, at the discretion of the prior, by corporal

correction with the birch, “_modo scholarium_.” Offenders who refused to

submit to this chastisement had their diet reduced to bread and water,

and after the third offence were liable to be ejected.[66]

Matthew Paris has left us a copy of the vow which the lepers of the

hospital of St. Julian, at St. Albans, were obliged to take before

admission. I append a translation of it as a document highly

illustrative of this part of our subject:—

“I, brother B, promise and, taking my bodily oath by touching the most

sacred Gospel, affirm, before God and all his saints in this church,

which is constructed in honour of St. Julian the confessor, in the

presence of Dominus R. the Archdeacon, that all the days of my life I

will be subservient and obedient to the commands of the Lord Abbot of

St. Albans for the time being, and to his archdeacon; resisting them in

nothing, unless such things should be commanded as would militate

against the Divine pleasure. I will never commit theft, nor bring a

false accusation against any one of the brethren, nor infringe the vow

of chastity, nor fail in my duty by appropriating anything or leaving

anything by will to others, unless by a dispensation granted by the

brothers. I will make it my study wholly to avoid all kind of usury, as

a monstrous thing, and hateful to God.[67] I will not be aiding and

abetting, in word or thought, directly or indirectly, in any plan by

which any one shall be appointed custos or master of the Lepers of St.

Julian, except the person appointed by the Lord Abbot of St. Albans. I

will be content, without strife or complaint, with the food and drink,

and other things given and allowed me by the master, according to the

usage and custom of the house. I will not transgress the bounds

prescribed to me, without the special license of my superiors, and with

their consent and will; and if I prove an offender against any article

named above, it is my wish that the Lord Abbot or his substitute may

punish me according to the nature and amount of the offence, as shall

seem best to him, and even to cast me forth an apostate from the

congregation of the brethren, without hope of remission, except through

the special grace of the Lord Abbot.”[68]

I have only very briefly to advert to one other subject, before closing

these remarks on the government of the English leper hospitals. I have

already alluded to a special order of knighthood having been established

at an early period for the care and superintendence of lepers.

Belloy[69] carries back the origin of this order in Palestine to a very

early period in the history of the Christian church. We know as a matter

of greater historical certainty that the knights of St. Lazarus

separated from the general order of Knights Hospitallers about the end

of the eleventh or commencement of the twelfth century.[70]

From the locality of their original establishment, and from their

central preceptory being near Jerusalem, they were at first generally

designated Knights of St. Lazarus, or of St. Lazarus and St. Mary of

Jerusalem. Latterly they were conjoined by different European Princes

with the Military Orders of Notre-Dame, Mount Carmel, and St.

Maurice.[71]

Saint Louis brought twelve of the Knights of St. Lazarus into France,

and entrusted them with the superintendence of the Ladreries or leper

hospitals of his kingdom.[72] The first notice of their having acquired

a footing in Great Britain is in the time of King Stephen. During the

reign of that sovereign their head establishment in England at Burton

Lazars, Leicestershire, was built by (as Nicols[73] states) a general

collection throughout the kingdom, but chiefly by the assistance of

Robert de Mowbray. Here they gradually acquired considerable wealth and

possessions.[74] I find that the Hospitals of Tilton, of the Holy

Innocents at Lincoln, of St. Giles, London, the Preceptory of Choseley

in Norfolk, and perhaps various others, were betimes annexed to Burton

Lazars as cells containing “fratres leprosos de Sancto Lazaro de

Jerusalem.” Nicols has printed not less than thirty-five charters

relating to the House of Burton Lazars. Its privileges and possessions

were confirmed by Henry II., King John, and Henry VI. It was at last

dissolved by Henry VIII.[75] The only settlement of the Knights of St.

Lazarus in Scotland that I have been able to find, was in the town of

Linlithgow, and the notice of it is very imperfect and unsatisfactory.

It is contained in a document of the reign of Alexander II., and

preserved in the Chartulary of Newbottle, in which reference is

expressly made to land held “de Fratribus de Sancto Lazaro” at

Linlithgow.[76] That the Lazarites had an establishment or

establishments in Scotland as well as in the sister kingdom, appears

borne out by a fact recorded by Helyot,[77] that in 1342, John Halliday,

a Scotsman, was appointed Governor of the Knights of St. Lazarus both in

England and Scotland, by the Grand Master of Boigny in France, who was

at that period the reputed head of the order. Indeed Pennecuik, on the

authority of Maimbourg (_Histoire des Croisades_), asserts that the

“Knights of St. Lazarus were numerous everywhere, but especially in

Scotland and France.”[78]

The first and original object of the Knights of St. Lazarus seems to

have been the care probably of the sick generally, but in a special

manner of those affected with leprosy.[79] They received lepers into

their order, superintended the inmates of the lazar-houses, and, till

the standing rule to the contrary was allowed to be changed by Pope

Innocent IV., they were obliged to elect a leper to be their Grand

Master;[80] “eatenus consuetudine observatâ ut Miles leprosus domûs

Sancti Lazari Hierosolymitani in ejus Magistrum assumeretur.”[81]

Toussaint de S. Luc, in his History, Ceremonials, etc., of the Order of

St. Lazarus, after it was united in 1608 by Henry IV. of France to those

of Notre-Dame and Mount Carmel, states that the candidates for this

united knighthood were obliged, upon the Holy Evangelists, to swear

_inter alia_, “to exercise charity and works of mercy towards the poor,

and particularly lepers” (_et particulièrement les lepreux_.)[82]

What extent and what kind of sway, if any, the Lazarite Knights of

England and Scotland were ever allowed to exert over the lepers of the

kingdom generally, or over the inmates of these leper cells and

hospitals that more especially belonged to them, I have not been able to

ascertain from any of the British historical records of the middle ages

that I have had an opportunity of consulting. It is, however, only too

probable that the Lazarites, like most of the other early orders of

knights, were induced by pride and avarice to turn from their original

objects of love and charity to others,—to views of power and

aggrandisement for themselves.

EXTENT OF ENDOWMENT OF THE HOSPITALS, DIET, ETC.

Most of the Scottish leper-houses were very poorly or not at all

endowed. Their principal subsistence seems to have been derived from

casual alms. Each of the doomed inmates of the hospitals was, like the

leper-struck heroine of the old Scottish poet, Henryson, by

... cauld and hounger sair

Compellit to be ane rank beggair.[83]

The inmates of the Greenside or Edinburgh lazar-house were allowed four

shillings Scotch (about fourpence sterling) per week, and for the

remainder of their subsistence they were, according to the original

rules of the institution, obliged to beg at the gate of their

hospital.[84] The leper-house at Aberdeen was supported from the public

funds of the town; but in 1591 James VI. granted a charter to “Robert

Abell and remanent of the pure (poor) leprous personis and thair

successors” in the hospital, to draw one peat of custom from every load

of them brought to the markets of Aberdeen, in consequence (as the words

of the original charter bear) “of the smallness of the rent appointit

for the leprous personis in the Hospitall being unable to sustene thame

in meet and fyre, quhairthrow they leif verie miserablie.”[85]

Other Scottish lazar-houses, however, were comparatively wealthy. Thus,

I have already mentioned that the Kingcase Hospital, near Ayr, had some

large and extensive landed properties attached to it.

The inmates of most of the smaller English leper-houses seem also to

have principally depended for their subsistence upon the precarious

contributions of the charitable. One of the lepers of the hospital at

Beccles was, by a royal grant, empowered to beg for his leprous

brothers.[86] Several of the larger English hospitals, however, were

well endowed, and the food, clothing, etc., of the inmates amply

provided for.

In some instances these endowments consisted of the accumulations of

large and voluntary charities; in others they were made up of rich

grants, left for the avowed purpose of founding chantries for the

spiritual peace and pardon of the donor and his family; and in other

cases, again, they were originally obtained as direct propitiations to

the church for misconduct and crime. Indulgences[87] of forty days’

pardon seem to have been occasionally granted by the bishops and other

ecclesiastical dignitaries to all the benefactors of the hospitals.

A bull of Pope Alexander III., which has been already referred to,

granted all leper hospital possessions an exemption from the payment of

tithes.[88] The canon was not universally adhered to in England, for, in

the account which Archbishop Parker drew up in 1562 of the hospitals in

the diocese of Canterbury, while Herbaldone and Bobbing leper-houses are

reported as “not charged with the taxes of the tenths,” it is declared

of the leper hospital of St. Laurence, Canterbury, that “the same is

taxed and payeth the perpetual tenth.”[89]

From the _Valor Ecclesiasticus_, taken in the time of Henry VIII., it

appears that whilst forty-eight hospitals, leper-houses, and

lazar-houses in the diocese of Norwich and county of Norfolk possessed

only a revenue of about £158 in all,[90] the rentals, on the other hand,

of certain individual hospitals were comparatively great for that

period. Thus, the revenues of Herbaldone[91] Hospital, Kent, and St.

James’, London,[92] were each rated at £100; of Sherburne above

£140;[93] of Maiden Bradley at near £200;[94] and those of the

establishment and “veri fair hospital” (as Leland terms it),[95] of

Burton Lazars were valued above £260.[96] In some of these richer

institutions the inmates were, as I have just remarked, well provided

for. As illustrative of this, I may quote the diet-table, etc., of one

or two of the wealthier leper hospitals. Thus, among the rules published

in the Additamenta to Matthew Paris, as established about the middle of

the fourteenth century by the Abbot Michaele for the leper-house of St.

Julian, near St. Albans, we find the following regulations laid down

with regard to the commons of the leprous brothers (de distributionibus

fratrum leprosorum):—[97]

“Let every leprous brother receive from the property of the hospital,

for his living and all necessaries, whatever he has been accustomed to

receive by the custom observed of old in the said hospital, namely,

every week seven loaves, of which five shall be white and two brown,

made from the grain as thrashed from the ear; also, every seventh week,

fourteen gallons of beer, or eight-pence (octo denarios) for the same.

Let him have, in addition to this, on the feasts of all the saints, on

the feast of Saint Julian, the purification of the Blessed Mary, the

Annunciation, the Trinity, Saint Albans, Saint John the Baptist, the

Assumption of the Blessed Mary, and the Nativity of the same, for each

feast, one loaf, one jar of beer, or a penny for the same, and one

obolus, which is called the charity of the aforesaid hospital; also, let

every leprous brother receive, at the feast of Christmas, forty gallons

of good beer, or forty pence for the same. Also, let each receive on the

said feast his share of two quarters of pure and clean corn, which is

called the great charity. Also, at the feast of St. Martin, each leper

shall have one pig from the common stall, and that there may be a fair

division of the pigs amongst the brothers, according to the custom

observed of old, we desire that the pigs, according to the number of

the lepers, may be brought forward in their presence, if it can

conveniently be done, otherwise in another place fit for the purpose,

and there each, according to the priority of entering the hospital,

shall choose one pig (otherwise a sum of money to be distributed equal

to the value of the pigs). Also, each leper shall receive on the feast

of Saint Valentine, for the whole of the ensuing year, one quarter of

oats. Also, about the feast of St. John Baptist, two bushels of salt, or

the current price. Also, at the feast of St. Julian, and at the feast of

St. Alban, one penny for the accustomed pittance. Also, at Easter one

penny, which is called by them ‘Flavvonespeni.’ Also, on Ascension-Day,

one obolus for buying potherbs. Also, on each Wednesday in Lent, bolted

corn of the weight of one of their loaves. Also, on the feast of St.

John the Baptist, four shillings for clothes. Also, at Christmas, let

there be distributed in equal portions among the leprous brothers,

fourteen shillings for their fuel through the year, as has been ordained

of old for the sake of peace and concord. Also, since, by the bounty of

our Lord the King, thirty shillings and fivepence have been assigned for

ever for the use of the lepers, which sum the Viscount of Hertford has

to pay them annually at the feasts of Easter and Michaelmas, we command

that the said 30s. and 5d. be equally divided among them in the usual

manner; and we desire the brothers to be contented with the aforesaid

distributions, which have been accustomed to be made amongst the leprous

brothers of old: But the residue of the property of the said hospital we

order and decree to be applied to the support of the Master and Priests

of the said Hospital.”

The dress of the lepers is laid down in regulations equally precise.

“The brothers are to have a tunic and upper tunic of russet, with a hood

cut from the same, so that the sleeves of the tunic be closed as far as

the hand, but not laced with knots or thread after the secular fashion.

They are to wear the upper tunic closed down to the ankles, and a close

cape of black cloth, of the same length with the hood, as they have been

accustomed of old.” A particular form of shoe was also ordered, and if

the order was disobeyed, the culprit was “condemned to walk daily

barefooted until the Master, considering his humility, said to

him—enough.”—P. 168.

The diet-roll of the large hospital at Sherburne is still more complex

than that of St. Julian’s. I extract the heads of it, and of some other

particulars with regard to the internal economy of the house, from

Surtees’ elaborate work, in which copies of the original documents are

given at full length.

The daily allowance of the lepers of Sherburne was a loaf weighing five

marks, and a gallon of ale to each; and betwixt every two, one mess or

commons of flesh three days in the week, and of fish, cheese, or butter,

on the remaining four; on high festival, a double mess; and, in

particular, on the feast of St. Cuthbert, in Lent, fresh salmon

(_salmones recentes_), if it could be had; if not, other fresh fish; and

on Michaelmas day four messed on one goose. With fresh fish, flesh, or

eggs, a measure of salt was delivered. When fresh fish could not be had,

red herrings (_allecia rubea_) were served three to a single mess; (and

it was specially enjoined that they, or aught that was served up, was

not to be putrid, nor corrupt, nor from animals that had died of

disease)[98]; or cheese and butter by weight; or three eggs. During

Lent each had a razer (_rasarium_) of wheat to make furmenty

(_simulam_), and two razers of beans to boil; sometimes greens or

onions; and every day, except Sunday, the seventh part of a razer of

bean meal, but on Sunday a measure and a half of pulse to make gruel.

Red herrings were prohibited from Pentecost to Michaelmas, and at the

latter each received two razers of apples. The lepers had a common

kitchen, and a common cook, fuel, and utensils for cooking, etc.—viz. a

lead, two brazen pots, a table, a large wooden vessel for washing or

making wine, a laver, two ale vats, and two bathing vats.

The sick had fire and candle, and all necessaries, until they either

convalesced or died; and one of the chaplains was assigned to hear the

confessions of the sick, to read the gospel to them on Sundays and

holidays, and to read the burial-service for the dead. The old woman who

attended on the sick had every week three wheaten loaves, and one mess

of flesh or fish; and when a brother or sister was buried, the

grave-digger had his meat and drink. Each leper had a yearly allowance

for his clothing of three yards of woollen cloth, white or russet, six

yards of linen, and six of canvass, and the tailor had his meat and

drink the day on which he came to cut out their clothes. Four fires were

allowed for the whole community. From Michaelmas to All Saints they had

two baskets of peat on double mess days, and four baskets daily from All

Saints to Easter. On Christmas eve they had four yule logs, each a

cart-load (“unusquisque erit unius quadrigatae”), with four trusses of

straw; four trusses of straw on All Saints eve and Easter eve; and four

bundles of rushes on the eves of Pentecost, St. John Baptist, and St.

Mary Magdalene; and on the anniversary of Martin de Sancta Cruce, every

leper received five shillings and fivepence in money.

The good food, lodging, and raiment provided by the rich endowments of

Sherburne were not without some alloy. The rules of the house were

strict, and the religious duties enforced upon the inmates were of an

austere character. “All the leprous brethren, whose health permitted,

were every day expected to attend matins, nones, vespers, and complines.

The bed-rid sick were enjoined to raise themselves, and say matins in

their bed; and for those who were still weaker, let them rest in peace,

_et quod dicere possint dicant_.” During Lent and Advent all the

brethren were required to receive corporal discipline three days in the

week, and the sisters, in like manner, _donec omnes vapulent_. And all

these, and other laws, Bishop Kellaw “did by his charter confirm and

order ever thereafter ‘_inviolabiter observari_.’”[99]

On the Continent the lazar hospitals partook of the same differences in

regard to poverty and wealth as we have traced in Britain. In France,

some of them, however, had become so very amply endowed by the

commencement of the fourteenth century that they at last excited the

avarice of Philip V., who subjected many of their inmates to the

flames.[100] “They were burned alive” (_on les bruloit tout vifs_), says

the historian Mezeray, “in order that the fire might purify at one and

the same time the infection of the body and that of the soul.”[101] The

ostensible cause for this act of fiendish barbarity was the absurd

allegation, that (as the original ordonnance of Philip bears[102]) the

lepers of France and other parts had been bribed to commit “the

detestable sin and horrible crime” (detestabile flagitium et crimen

horrendum) of poisoning the wells, waters, etc., used by the Christians.

The real cause, there is little doubt, was a desire, through this flimsy

excuse, to rob the richer hospitals of their funds and possessions; and

this appears only too strongly in the anxiety displayed in the special

wording of Philip’s original edict, that all the goods of the lepers be

lodged and held for himself, (ordinavimus, _inter alia_, quod omnia bona

eorum ad manum nostrum ponerentur et tenerentur.)[103] The persecution

of them was again temporarily renewed in 1388, under Charles VI. of

France.[104]

DATES OF THE APPEARANCE AND DISAPPEARANCE OF LEPROSY IN GREAT BRITAIN.

Much has been written regarding the date of the first appearance of

Leprosy in western Europe.

By Astruc,[105] Bach,[106] and others, it has been averred that the

leprosy of the middle ages was introduced from the East by those who

returned from the crusades. Some of our own historians, as Fuller[107]

and Heron,[108] allege that by this means it first reached Great

Britain. It is quite possible, allowing the disease for the sake of

argument to be contagious, that through the increased international

intercourse of that period, it may have been propagated more rapidly and

widely than would otherwise have occurred; but there are ample reasons

and proofs for believing that it existed on the continent of Europe, and

even as far westward as England, before the crusade fanaticism had drawn

any converts from this country.

The first relay of Englishmen engaged in the crusade left in 1096, and

returned two years afterwards. Several English leper-houses were founded

before that period.

Lanfranc, Bishop of Canterbury, and the ecclesiastical favourite of

William the Conqueror, died, according to the evidence of the Saxon

Chronicle in 1089,[109] seven years previous to the first crusade.

During his lifetime he founded two hospitals near Canterbury, one a

house built of stone (lapideum domum decentem et amplum) for patients

affected with various descriptions of diseases (variis infirmitatum

qualitatibus), and the second an hospital constructed of houses of wood,

and specially set aside for lepers (ligneas domos ad opus

leprosorum.)[110] Somner states that this latter institution still

exists at Canterbury as a charitable establishment.[111] Other English

lazar-houses were probably of as early a date, or at least earlier than

the first emigration for the crusades. Brigges alleges that the

leper-house of St. Leonards in Northampton, was founded in William I.’s

reign,[112] or before 1087; and one at Chatham was, according to Tanner,

in existence before the termination of the short reign of his son,

William Rufus.[113]

But more than a century even previous to the date of which we speak,

leprosy had been made a subject of legislation in Great Britain. In a

parliament held by Pepin, King of France in 757 at Campiegne, it was

enacted that leprosy in a husband or wife be regarded as a cause of

separation, and that the sound party might again remarry.[114] Lobineau,

in his history of Brittany,[115] tells us as one of the effects of this

law of divorce, that among the higher ranks of the city of Dol, there

were a number (_quantité_) of husbands who had as many as three wives

living at the same time. Now among the earliest extant code of laws

enacted in any part of Britain, those, namely, of the celebrated Welsh

King, Hoel Dha, who died about the year 950,[116] there is a canon to

the same effect as that referred to, viz. that a married female was

entitled to separation, and the restitution of her goods, provided her

husband was affected with leprosy.[117] There is, however, as we shall

afterwards see, great reason to believe that the word leprosy was then

used as a generic term, including under it many different varieties of

cutaneous affections.

I can offer nothing precise in regard to the exact period of the first

introduction of Leprosy into Scotland. If, as I have already shown to be

highly probable, the term Liberton is merely a conversion from leper

town, it would render it likely that the disease was an early visitant

of this country; for we know that Liberton is mentioned in various old

charters of the reign of David I., who died in 1153.[118] In the

Foundation Charter of Holyrood (1128) the mill and chapel “de

Libertune”[119] are mentioned, and in the chartulary of Kelso, “William,

parsona de Liberton,” signs as witness to some charters dated during the

latter half of the twelfth century.[120] At a later date there figures

repeatedly, in the ancient and well-known verses of Blind Harry, as an

occasional companion of Wallace—

“Thomas Gray, parsone off Libertone,”

a member of the church militant, who in more than one instance seems to

have thrown aside his bell and book for the purpose of sharing in the

brave struggles and hardy adventures of the Scottish patriot.

But I can adduce much more solid proof than this unstable philological

basis affords, for stating that, as far back at least as the latter half

of the twelfth century, the disease was not only known in Scotland, but

that hospitals were by that time actually erected for the seclusion of

the victims of it. The hospital of Auldnestun, in Lauderdale, had, as I

have already stated, three carrucates of land granted to it, as appears

from the Melrose Chartulary, by Walter, the son of Alan. The date of

this grant, as of most others in the old chartularies, is not preserved,

but it is a fixed and well-ascertained fact in Scottish history that the

donor of it, the first of the illustrious, and afterwards royal line of

Stewarts, died himself as a Cluniac monk in Melrose Abbey in the year

1177.[121]

William the Lion, who died in 1214, confirmed, as we have seen, a grant

to the leper-house of Aldcambus; and the hospital of Rothfan, near

Elgin, was evidently established during, if not prior to, the reign of

his son and successor, Alexander II. In the chapter of gifts to this

Rothfan hospital, by John Byseth, Alexander is spoken of as the reigning

prince, the preamble to the grant declaring that the endowment was

bestowed “for the love of charity, for the soul of King William, and for

the salvation of my noble lord King Alexander” (pro salute domini mei

Alexandri nobilis Regis).[122] Alexander II. died in 1249, so that by

this time the disease was certainly spread to the more northern parts of

the kingdom.

All Scottish records of these earlier times are almost, as I have

already observed, so entirely lost, that it now seems impossible to

ascertain whether any leper-houses existed in this kingdom at a date

antecedent to those to which I have thus alluded. That this was the

case, however, is not improbable.

Before the first notice of the earliest Scotch leper-house that I have

been able to trace—viz. that of Auldnestun, about 1170, similar

establishments were abundant in England. The charters of many of them

appear to have been either granted or confirmed in the reign of Henry

I., who died in 1154, and was a contemporary of the Scotch Kings, Edgar,

Alexander I., and David I.; and it is not unworthy of remark that two,

if not more, lazar-houses were founded in England by natives of Scotland

prior to the date of the earliest Scotch leper-house that I have been

able to discover. For Malcolm IV. founded and endowed one in his

principality of Huntingdon in 1165;[123] and sixty years earlier, or in

1101,[124] Matilda, the “gode Queene Maud” of Henry I., and daughter of

Malcolm III. of Scotland, established the hospital of St. Giles,

Bishopsgate, for forty lepers, a chaplain, clerk, and messengers.

But at whatever respective periods the disease first appeared in England

and Scotland, there are strong reasons for believing that it continued

to prevail in the latter kingdom long after it had ceased, or almost

entirely ceased, in the former. In the preface to the statutes of the

leper-house of St. Albans, drawn up about 1350, and already referred to

as published in the supplement to Matthew Paris’ history,[125] it is

stated that the number of lepers that presented themselves for admission

had diminished so much by that time, that their expense of maintenance

was below the revenue of the institution; “in general,” it is added,

“there are now not above three, sometimes only two, and occasionally

only one.” In exactly the same year (1350) that this report was drawn up

for St. Albans, was it thought necessary to institute the leper-house at

Glasgow; and nearly one hundred years later, or in 1427, the Scottish

Parliament deemed it proper to legislate on the subject of lepers.

The hospital of St. Mary Magdalene, at Ripon, was established in 1139

for the relief of all the lepers in that district. In the time of Henry

VIII, it contained only two priests and five poor people to pray for all

“Christen sowlez.”[126]

At Illeford, in Essex, an hospital was instituted in the reign of Henry

II. or Richard I. for thirteen lepers. In one of the reports of the

commissioners for suppressing colleges, hospitals, etc., in the time of

Edward VI., it is observed, in regard to the state of this Illeford

Hospital, that though founded “to find 13 pore men beying Lepers, 2

pryests, and one clerke—thereof there is at this day but one pryest and

2 pore men.”[127]

By the same commission most other lazar-houses were reported as having

no leprous patients, and yet only a few years previously was the

leper-house of Aberdeen built, and forty or fifty years afterwards (in

1591) the Edinburgh hospital at Greenside was established. We have

several later notices of the disease among us. In the Aberdeen

Kirk-Session Register, vol. i., it is stated that, on the 13th May 1604,

the kirk-session ordained “Helene Smythe, ane puir woman infectit with

leprosie, to be put in the hospitall appoyntit for keeping and haulding

of lipper-folkis betwixt the townis; and the keyis of the said hospitall

to be deliverit to her.”[128]

As late as 1693 we have some records of the lepers of Kingcase. On the

11th March of that year a complaint was lodged by the procurator-fiscal

“anent the intruding of the lepers of Kingcase upon the priviledges only

propper to the burgess and freemen (of Prestwick) by there resorting to

the shoar, and taking up certain timber and other wrack, and casting

greater quantities of peats and turf off the common and moss, &c.,

which, being seriously pondered by the magistrates, &c., they ordained

that none of the said lepers of Kingcase do so under the penalty of ane

hundredth pund, _toties quoties_, to be paid by ilk ane (each one) of

them in caise of failyie (failure).”[129]

The disease appears to have continued in the northern islands of

Scotland long after it had disappeared from the mainland, and, indeed,

all other parts of Great Britain. In Shetland it has been known for

centuries. I have already made a quotation from Brand to show that it

was at Lerwick as late as the latter part of the seventeenth century. In

some districts of Shetland it continued still later. Apparently most of

those there affected either belonged to or were sent to the Island of

Papa. I have in my possession a MS. extract from the Session-books of

Walls, showing the expenses incurred in keeping the lepers at Papa from

1736 to 1740. Four of them appear to have died during these years, and

two of the entries are for the “tobacco”[130] used at their funerals.

In 1742 there is a long entry in the Session Records of Walls, earnestly

enjoining a day of public thanksgiving for the supposed total

deliverance of the country from the effects of the leprosy.

The disease, however, was not eradicated entirely. Mr. Jack, the

resident clergyman, who wrote the account of the parish of Northmaven

for the Statistical Account of Scotland, published in 1798, seems to

have seen what he terms several miserable cases of the disease, and

adds, that in many instances there is reason to suspect a hereditary

taint.[131] Dr. Thomson urged his pupil, Dr. Edmondston of Lerwick, to

trace out the history of the disease in the north, and that gentleman

has made the following observations upon it in his work on the Zetland

Isles:—

“Elephantiasis, known by the name of leprosy, was very frequent in

Zetland about sixty years ago, but its occurrence since that time has

only been occasional, and at present scarcely an instance of it is to be

met with. A native of Zetland, a few years ago, was received into the

hospital of Edinburgh, labouring under true elephantiasis. I have seen

obscure degrees of it in Zetland, where the face was bloated, the skin

scaly and rough, and the voice slightly hoarse; but they did not

terminate fatally, nor was the affection apparently communicated to

others. The last instance I saw of it was in the person of a boy. His

friends could assign no cause for its appearance, and said that it had

come on spontaneously, and proceeded gradually. The disease had been

stationary for some time before it fell under my observation.”[132]

As so far confirmatory of the disease having thus longer remained in

Shetland than in the more southern parts of these kingdoms, I may here

mention that in the middle ages it was very common,[133] and has since

long continued to linger in the neighbouring Faroe Islands, and in

Iceland. It appears, from Debes’[134] evidence, that true tubercular

leprosy, as we shall see in the sequel, continued to prevail in the

Faroe Islands (the nearest land north of Shetland) in the middle of the

seventeenth century. Still later—viz. in 1768, Petersen[135] found 280

lepers in the hospitals in Iceland. Olafsen,[136] Troil,[137]

Holland,[138] and Henderson,[139] have each, from personal observation,

described the disease as existing in that island; and the French

Government expedition in 1836, under Gaimard,[140] have, in the

beautiful work they are at present publishing, already given several

excellent coloured sketches of natives affected with tubercular leprosy.

The disease, according to various authors, still prevails in the

northern kingdoms of Norway and Sweden. I am not by any means

sufficiently intimate with the literature of the Scandinavian radesyge,

to venture to offer any decided opinion with regard to its nosological

nature, and its alleged relation to the leprosy of the middle ages. As

far, however, as I am acquainted with the subject, it appears to me that

under the name of radesyge, two, if not more distinct species of disease

were, by Holst and the other authors who first wrote upon it, confounded

and described together. One of these, the radesyge properly so called,

is probably nearly allied to, if not identical with the sibbens of

Scotland. Another of the supposed varieties of the disease, the

spedalskhed or spetälska, seems on the other hand to be a different

nosological species, hereditary, non-contagious, chronic, incurable, and

identical in many, if not in all its characters, with true tubercular

leprosy. The spetälska seems confined to particular and more limited

localities in the north than the radesyge; and when we look to the

descriptions of it as seen at Ostrobothnia by Udmann,[141] or as given

by Hünefeld,[142] in regard to the disease at Bergen, we certainly find

these descriptions very exactly answering to the definitions of

tubercular or Arabian leprosy given by our best nosologists and

pathologists, and which I shall have occasion afterwards to discuss at

some length. Besides, radesyge is a disease which is believed by many to

have made its first appearance in Sweden and Norway during the last

century, while the spetälska was known at a greatly earlier date. The

present hospital for it at Bergen was, as Hünefeld[143] informs us,

founded as early as the year 1268.

In the Second Part I will take an opportunity of considering at length

the nosological nature of the leprosy of the middle ages, particularly

as it was seen prevailing in Great Britain. I will inquire into the

rank, age, etc., of those attacked, and point out some of the causes

which have been considered as connected with the dissemination of the

disease; and lastly, I will endeavour to bring together some of the

strange regulations of medical police that were adopted in England and

Scotland with regard to the infected.

PART II.

THE NOSOLOGICAL NATURE OF THE DISEASE.

In the preceding Part we have shown the extent to which leprosy

prevailed during the middle ages in Great Britain; the number of

hospitals that were instituted for the reception and seclusion of the

infected; the government and regulations of these hospitals; and the

dates of the commencement and disappearance of the disease in the

kingdoms of England and Scotland. Before proceeding farther, we

propose,—in this Second Part,—to pause and discuss the strictly

medical question of the specific nosological nature of the malady, whose

history we have thus far considered.

I have already taken occasion to speak of the leprosy of the middle

ages, as identical with the species of cutaneous disorder, which has

been variously denominated the tubercular leprosy, (_Lepra

tuberculosa_); the leprosy of the Arabians (_Lepra Arabum_); and the

elephantiasis of the Greeks (_Elephantiasis Græcorum_). The particular

form of chronic cutaneous disease, to which these different appellations

have been severally applied, is an affection very distinctly marked in

its more leading symptoms and course. Before, however, attempting to

prove that the European and British leprosy of former times was

specifically identical with the malady in question, it will expedite our

investigation of the question if, in the first instance, we obtain a

precise and perfect picture of the tubercular or Arabian leprosy itself.

By adopting this plan, we shall have placed before us a standard, as it

were, by which we can judge of and test those more or less imperfect

descriptions of the leprosy of the middle ages, which we may in the

sequel have occasion to quote and animadvert upon. And in order to

obtain such a standard of comparison as we have now in view, and that

without any possibility of prejudging the subject, I shall cite the

description of this species of disease from Dr. Bateman of London, and

Dr. Schedel of Paris;—from the first, because the characters which he

has given of this and other cutaneous affections are generally and

justly looked upon by British pathologists as the most clear and

distinct that can anywhere be referred to;—and from the last, because

his account of tubercular leprosy is, I believe, the latest that has

issued from the medical press, and the author has already, by a former

work,[144] distinguished himself by the excellence of his descriptions,

and the precision of his diagnosis of cutaneous diseases.

MODERN DESCRIPTIONS AND DEFINITIONS OF TUBERCULAR LEPROSY.

“The elephantiasis,” says Dr. Bateman[145] “(as described by the

Greeks), is principally characterised by the appearance of shining

tubercles, of different sizes, of a dusky red or livid colour, on the

face, ears, and extremities; together with a thickened and rugose state

of the skin, a diminution or total loss of its sensibility, and a

falling off of all the hair, except that of the scalp.

“The disease is described as very slow in its progress, sometimes

continuing for several years, without materially deranging the functions

of the patient. During this continuance, however, great deformity is

gradually produced. The alæ of the nose become swelled and scabrous, and

the nostrils dilate; the lips are tumid; the external ears, particularly

the lobes, are enlarged and thickened, and beset with tubercles; the

skin of the forehead and cheeks grows thick and tumid, and forms large

and prominent rugæ, especially over the eyes; the hair of the eyebrows,

the beard, the pubes, axillæ, etc., falls off; the voice becomes hoarse

and obscure; and the sensibility of the parts affected is obtuse, or

totally abolished, so that pinching or puncturing them gives no

uneasiness. This disfiguration of the countenance suggested the idea of

the features of a satyr or a wild beast; whence the disease was by some

called _Satyriasis_, and by others _Leontiasis_.

“As the malady proceeds, the tubercles begin to crack, and at length to

ulcerate: Ulcerations also appear in the throat, and in the nose, which

sometimes destroy the palate, and the cartilaginous septum; the nose

falls, and the breath is intolerably offensive. The thickened and

tuberculated skin of the extremities becomes divided by fissures, and

ulcerates, or is corroded under dry sordid scabs, so that the fingers

and toes gangrene, and separate, joint after joint.”

The description of the course and symptoms of the disease, as given by

Schedel, is more minute and detailed.

“_Lepra tuberculosa_, or Greek elephantiasis, is” (he observes),[146]

“characterised by the eruption of fawn-coloured or yellowish-brown

tubercles, various in size, irregular in shape, somewhat shining, and

soft and smooth to the touch. These tubercles are preceded by

erythematous patches, in which the sensibility of the skin is

diminished: slightly elevated at their outset, they become afterwards

more projecting, whilst the sensibility of the parts is usually quite

lost, although they are sometimes painful when touched. They more

frequently occur upon the face, the nose, the ears, the lips, etc.; and

being accompanied with a thickened and rugose state of the skin, they

cause a most hideous distortion of the features, and frightful

deformity.

“The evolution of the leprous tubercles is usually preceded by that of

slight erythematous patches of a tawny red hue in whites, and blacker

than the surrounding integuments in negroes. These patches are worthy of

attention, since they announce the dreadful disease which is about to

appear. When they are of some duration, the skin in these points already

begins to lose its sensibility. Sooner or later, in some cases quickly

in others very slowly, small soft, livid red tumours appear, varying in

size from that of a pea to that of a walnut, or even larger. When these

tubercles come out, the erythematous patches, on which the sensibility

of the integument had become lessened, sometimes become painful; so much

so, that we have heard patients declare that the pain produced by the

handling of the small tumours at this period was similar to that felt

when the cubital nerve receives a blow at the elbow. When they appear

on the face, they are generally accompanied by a puffy swelling of the

surrounding parts.

“Sometimes only small surfaces are attacked. We have seen the nose and

ears alone affected, and much swollen and enlarged. When the disease

occurs on the lower extremities only, it is found on the inferior part

of the thigh, and around the ankles.

“After remaining stationary for a longer or shorter time, the disorder

increases: instead of a few tubercles to be met with here and there, the

whole face is covered with large dusky red lumps, separated by deep

furrows; the features are horribly distorted; the alæ of the nose are

thickened and swollen; the nostrils dilated; the eyebrows tuberculated

and overhanging; the lips enormously thickened; the skin of the forehead

and cheeks is thick, uneven, and tumid; the chin much increased in size,

and the whole of the affected surfaces appear as if smeared with oil,

and of a dusky livid red; the external ears, especially the lobes, are

much enlarged and thickened, and beset with tubercles; the eyebrows and

eyelashes and beard fall off; the sense of smell becomes impaired or

totally lost; that of touch is often strangely affected; the voice grows

husky, and is frequently lost; the eyesight is greatly weakened; the

unfortunate patient is dejected; and the muscular powers depressed in a

singular manner. With regard to the _libido inexplicabilis_, so much

spoken of, our observations do not coincide with those of Dr. Adams, who

mentions actual wasting of the generative organs. In the cases which

have come under our notice we have witnessed quite the reverse, and yet

several were young men in whom the disease was not too far advanced.

“At a still later period the symptoms are even more dreadful; the

tubercles become the seat of ulceration, and sores of an unhealthy

character succeed, and discharge an ichorous fluid, which, on

concreting, form dark adherent scabs of various extent and thickness;

these incrustations are sometimes followed by cicatrices, but this is

unfortunately a rare occurrence. On the extremities the thick and

tuberculated skin becomes divided by fissures, and ulcerates or is

corroded under the dry scabs, so that the fingers and toes mortify and

separate, joint after joint, the miserable patient surviving these

horrid mutilations. Those individuals whom we have seen perish from this

disease were carried off by enteritis; large ulcerations were found in

the ilium, cæcum, and colon, excepting in one case, in which death was

caused by tubercular phthisis.”

In studying the phenomena of this, as of any other disease, it will

simplify our recollection of its more leading and more constant

characters, if we have the principal symptoms of it embodied in a

concise nosological definition, instead of being spread through a long

and detailed description. Two of our last and best British nosologists

give the following definition of tubercular leprosy or Greek

elephantiasis (for I use these terms here and elsewhere as words

perfectly synonymous).

“Elephantiasis” (says Dr. Cullen), “is a contagious disease, with (1)

the face deformed with tubercles; (2) the skin thick, wrinkled, rough,

unctuous, and divested of hair; (3) loss of feeling in the extreme

joints; and (4) the voice is hoarse and nasal.”[147]

In defining the genus elephantiasis, Dr. Good selects the second and

third characters of Cullen as the most distinctive, and adds to these

two others—viz. “(1) eyes fierce and staring; (2) perspiration highly

offensive.” In defining the first species of this genus (or the Greek

elephantiasis of other authors), he introduces as its three

pathognomonic symptoms, the first and fourth characters of Cullen and a

part of the second.[148]

NOMENCLATURE OF THE DISEASE.

Leprosy, such as it is portrayed in the descriptions and definitions

which we have quoted from Bateman, Schedel, Cullen, and Good (and I

might have cited any of our modern medical writers to the same effect),

has had at different times, and by different authors, a great variety of

appellations applied to it. In order to understand the nosological

nature of the disease, as it formerly prevailed in Europe, it is

requisite to state a few uninteresting but indispensable facts, in

regard to the changes which have occurred in its nomenclature.

In the medical writings of Aretæus, Aetius, and the later school of

Greek physicians, the disease is described under the title of

elephantiasis, for (says Aretæus) “it is disgusting to the sight, and

terrible in all respects (_est visu fœdus et in omnibus terribilis_),

like the beast of the same name.”[149] The Arabian medical authors

applied the corresponding term of “_Das Fil_,” “elephant disease,” or

elephantiasis, to an affection entirely different, and one apparently

unknown to the Greek physicians, namely, the tumid, Barbadoes, or Cochin

leg of modern pathologists. At the same time the Arabian authorities

described the disease, known to the Greeks under the name of

elephantiasis, by the Arabic terms “_Judam_,” or “_Juzam_” and

“_Aljuzam_.”[150] The confusion thus apt to arise from describing two

different diseases under a corresponding name was greatly increased by

the errors committed by the Latin translators of Avicenna, Rhazes, and

other Arabic authors. These translators rendered the _Das fil_ or

Elephant disease of the Arabic original, by the words elephanta and

elephantiasis; and having thus, first, by an improper adaptation,

appropriated the use of the latter Greek term to a disease very

different in its specific characters from the elephantiasis of the

Greeks themselves, they subsequently added to the intricacies of the

subject by translating the Arabic “Juzam” (the disease that was in

reality identical with the elephantiasis of the Greeks) by the term

lepra—a term which the Greek physicians had generally applied to

different forms of scaly eruption, but never to any form of tubercular

disease.[151]

By these unfortunate mistakes medical men were betrayed into great

confusion in the use of these several terms. An identity in names did

not signify an identity in objects. The tumid leg, _das fil_, or

elephantiasis of the Arabians, is a disease perfectly different from the

tuberculous face affection or elephantiasis of the Greeks.

Again, the term lepra, as used by the Greek physicians themselves,

signifies morbid changes in the skin, marked by the presence of scales,

and which changes in the skin have no relation whatever to either the

Arabian or Greek elephantiasis; but the same term lepra, as used by the

Arabic translators, was applied to designate the latter of these two

affections, viz. the Arabic “Juzam,” or elephantiasis of the Greeks.

Hence, the _elephantiasis of the Greeks_ and the _lepra of the

Arabians_, or more properly of the Arabian translators, are expressions

altogether synonymous, as being employed to designate the same

individual disease; and it is of the first importance to hold this fact

in view in studying the histories of the European leprosy, which have

been left us by our own and by other medical authors of the middle

ages.[152] For we must further recollect that the knowledge of the Greek

tongue was almost entirely lost during the dark ages, and that nearly

all learning being then confined to the Moors and Arabs, the scholastic

language was principally the Arabic. Thus it happened, that when the

love of literature and the pursuit of science began to revive about the

twelfth century, the medical as well as the philosophical writings of

the ancient Greeks were read and studied by the inhabitants of Western

Europe through the medium of Arabic translations of them, or in Latin

versions made from these translations.[153] The designations of

individual diseases were known to the learned student, and to the

medical practitioner and author of the times in question, by the names

only under which they were described in these versions. The

_elephantiasis_ of the Greeks, or corresponding _juzam_ of the Arabians,

was rendered by the term _lepra_ in almost every Latin translation from

the Arabian or Saracenic school; and hence it is that we find this term

lepra used by the medical and other authors of the succeeding period, as

the common appellative for the individual disease to which the two

former designations were originally applied. In many medical works of

the middle ages the single name “_lepra_”[154] is employed; in the

writings of others, and more particularly of later authors, it has the

distinctive designation (_Lepra Arabum_) added to it,[155] in order to

discriminate it from the _Lepra Græcorum_ or scaly eruptions, to which

that term was primarily applied by the Greeks. In still more modern

times, and with the same view, the _Elephantiasis Græcorum_, Juzam, or

Lepra of the Arabians, or rather of the Arabian translators, has been

very frequently termed (as I believe was first proposed by Vidal)[156]

tuberculous leprosy (_Lepra tuberculosa_), in order to distinguish it

from the other very different disease, the scaly leprosy of the Greeks

(_Lepra vulgaris_, _Lepra squamosa_, etc.) But, whatever may be the

difference in the nomenclature of different authors, we are to hold this

in recollection, that the various terms of the elephantiasis of the

Greeks (_Elephantiasis Græcorum_), the juzam or leprosy of the Arabian

translators (_Lepra Arabum_), the tuberculous leprosy of modern European

authors (_Lepra tuberculosa_, _Lepra nodosa_), and the simple leprosy

(_Lepra_) of most authors of the middle ages,[157]—all signify that

same specific and individual disease, whose distinctive characters we

have already traced from Bateman and Schedel, and from Cullen and Good.

SPECIFIC CHARACTER OF THE LEPROSY WHICH PREVAILED DURING THE MIDDLE

AGES.

Having premised the preceding tedious but necessary digression upon the

nomenclature of leprosy, we now proceed to consider the question whether

the particular form of disease that prevailed on the Continent and in

Great Britain during the middle ages, and for the victims of which so

many hospitals were built, and so many laws enacted, answered or not, in

its nosological characters, to the _Elephantiasis Græcorum_, _Lepra

Arabum_ or Arabian leprosy, such as we have found that malady depicted

in the standards already referred to, and such as it is known to prevail

at the present day in different localities in the new and old world,

that I shall afterwards take occasion to specify. We begin our inquiry

into the nature of the disease, by considering the characters of the

leprosy as it was seen prevailing, almost epidemically, in the middle

ages.

1. _Upon the Continent of Europe._—To obtain a solution of this part of

our problem, let us turn to the works of the medical authors of these

early times, and endeavour to ascertain from them the nature of the

disease which they denominated leprosy.

Various minute descriptions of leprosy (lepra) have been left us in the

writings of different European physicians and surgeons of the middle

ages, who had an opportunity of studying the disease in different

kingdoms upon the Continent during the period of its actual prevalence.

Amongst others we may especially refer to the accounts of it, written

during the thirteenth century, by the monk Theodoric,[158] afterwards a

distinguished surgeon of Bologna; by the celebrated Lanfranc, who was

first a practitioner in Milan,[159] and subsequently in Paris; and by

Professor Arnold Bachuone,[160] of Barcelona, reputed in his day the

greatest physician in Spain. Valescus de Taranta,[161] a physician of

Montpellier; Bernhard Gordon,[162] Professor of Medicine in the same

city; the famous French Surgeon, Guy de Chauliac;[163]—Vitalis de

Furno,[164] Cardinal of Albany; and Petrus de Argelata,[165] a

practitioner of Bologna, have each left us descriptions of leprosy drawn

up during the fourteenth century; and during the two succeeding

centuries, we have more or less accurate accounts of the disease given

by Professors Montagnana[166] of Padua and Matthew Ferrari de Gradi[167]

of Pavia, by Ambrose Paré,[168] Joannes Fernelius,[169] Palmarius,[170]

Hildanus[171] and various others.[172]

Each of the several authors just now named has described, with greater

or less precision, the symptoms of the prevailing leprosy, or chronic

incurable cutaneous disease, for the reception and seclusion of the

victims of which the numerous lazar-houses in Europe were established.

The details which they all individually give of the leading characters

of the malady[173] are in their essential points altogether similar; and

the symptoms which they describe it as presenting are exactly those

which distinguish Greek elephantiasis. The disease is portrayed with

brevity and precision by some of them. Others enter into a detail of its

phenomena, greatly more minute than the descriptions I have quoted from

Bateman and Schedel; and several give a history of the marks to be

derived from the blood, urine, extremities, eyes, face, voice, etc., in

a manner so very elaborate and minute, as might surprise us at the

present day, did we not recollect the immense importance that depended

in these times upon a just and faithful distinction of the disease,

when, in a suspected case, a fellow-being might,—by the absence of the

more characteristic signs—be saved, or—by their presence—be

condemned, for the remainder of life, to all the horrors of a

lazar-house. A few, as Guy de Chauliac, Argelata, etc., in the

thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and in still later times, Gregory

Horst, Forrestus, etc., add a most minute and detailed account of the

various symptoms which the physician ought to look for in examining a

suspected person, and point out the exact mode in which he ought to

proceed with this examination before venturing to consign a suspected

person to the seclusion of a leper hospital, and thus for ever doom him

to be a despised “child of St. Lazarus.”

In an essay such as the present, it would be out of place to attempt to

show, by the exact words of each of the authors to whom I have just now

alluded, the truth of the proposition that the lepra in their writings,

and consequently the lepra of Europe in their times, was strictly

identical with the elephantiasis of the Greeks, and that the leper

hospitals were specially intended for those affected with this disease.

As examples, however, of the whole, I may cite the observations of two

of the authors whom I have named; and I shall select for this purpose

Gordon and Guy de Chauliac, principally from their two names standing

higher in medical history than most of the others that I have

enumerated—from their living at a time when the disease was most

prevalent,—and from their descriptions of the malady itself being on

the whole more than usually concise and methodic.

Bernhard Gordon was, at the commencement of the fourteenth century, one

of the first, if not the first Professor of Medicine in the

newly-established school of Montpellier. “He has left us,” says Dr.

Freind,[174] “a large volume called _Lilium Medicinae_ (for in that

affected age everything writ in Physick, was either a Lily or a Rose), a

book mightily celebrated in those times.” This volume is generally

stated to have been written about the year 1305[175] or 1309.[176] From

the very long chapter which is devoted in this work to the consideration

of leprosy, I shall translate the account which the author gives of his

threefold stages or classes of symptoms of the disease—viz. the occult,

the infallible, and the last or terminating signs.

1. “The occult premonitory signs (_signa occulta in principio_) of

leprosy are (he states) a reddish colour of the face, verging to

duskiness; the expiration begins to be changed; the voice grows raucous,

the hairs become thinned and weaker, and the perspiration and breath

incline to fœtidity; the mind is melancholic with frightful dreams

and nightmare; in some cases scabs, pustules, and eruptions, break out

over the whole body; the disposition of the body begins to become

loathsome, but still, while the form and figure (_forma et figura_) are

not corrupted, the patient is not to be adjudged for separation, but is

to be most strictly watched (_nondum est judicandus ad separationem, sed

est fortissime comminandus_.)

2. “The infallible signs (_signa infallibilia_) are enlargement of the

eyebrows, with loss of their hair; rotundity of the eyes; swelling of

the nostrils externally, and contraction of them within; voice nasal;

colour of the face glossy (_lucidus_), verging to a darkish hue; aspect

of the face terrible, with a fixed look, and with acumination and

contraction of the pulps of the ears. And there are many other signs, as

pustules and excrescences, atrophy of the muscles, and particularly of

those between the thumb and forefinger; insensibility of the

extremities; fissures and infections of the skin; the blood, when drawn

and washed, containing black, earthy, rough, sandy matters, and other

marks which authors prominently mention, but for me, those suffice which

are to be found in the face. The above are those evident and manifest

signs, which, when they do appear, the patient ought to be separated

from the people (_quibus apparentibus patiens est a populo

sequestrandus_), or, in other words, secluded in a leper-house.

3. “The signs of the last stage, and breaking-up (_naufragium_) of the

disease are, corrosion and falling-in of the cartilage forming the

septum of the nose; fissure and division (_scissura_) of the feet and

hands; enlargement of the lips, and a disposition to glandular swelling;

dyspnœa and difficulty of breathing; the voice hoarse and barking;

the aspect of the face frightful, and of a dark colour; and the pulse

small and imperceptible.”[177]

After giving the above accurate description of the leprosy, Gordon, in a

subsequent page,[178] earnestly states, “No one ought to be adjudged as

a leper unless there manifestly appear a corruption of the figure

(_corruptio figurae_), or that state which is indicated by his _signa

infallibilia_. And I repeat to you this (he adds), as often as I have

occasion to mention the _corruptio figurae_, because, as it appears to

me, lepers are at the present day very injudiciously adjudged. Whoever,

therefore, has ears, let him attend to this, if he will.”

The other medical author whom I particularised for quotation, Guy de

Chauliac, practised first at Lyons, and afterwards at Avignon. He was

one of the most celebrated surgeons in the fourteenth century,[179] and

was successively medical attendant upon Popes Clement VI. and Urban

V.[180] From the notice which he gives of the Black Death Pestilence of

1363, it would seem that he was then stationed at Avignon, and engaged

in the Composition of his “Inventarium sive Collectorium Partis

Chirurgicalis Medicinae.” In the long disquisition on lepra, contained

in the 6th treatise of this work,[181] De Chauliac, after stating the

usual subdivision of the disease into four varieties or species

(Elephantia, Leonina, Tyria, Alopecia), goes on to describe the common

signs of all the varieties of leprosy, (signa communia _Omnium_

specierum Lepræ). The signs or symptoms indicating the actual presence

of the disease are, he says, some unequivocal, others equivocal (_quædam

univoca, quædam equivoca_). Among the former set (_signa univoca_) he

ranges the six following symptoms:—“(1.) rotundity of the ears and

eyes; (2.) thickening and tuberosity of the eyebrows, with falling off

of their hair; (3.) dilatation and disfiguration of the nostrils

externally, with stricture of them within, and fœtidity of the lips;

(4.) voice raucous and nasal; (5.) fœtidity of the breath, and of the

whole person; (6.) fixed and horrible satyr-like aspect.”

I question if any of our modern nosologists, or any recent writers on

cutaneous diseases, have proposed a more correct definition, or accurate

and concise diagnosis of the _Elephantiasis Græcorum_ than is presented

in the above enumeration of its pathognomonic symptoms by the old French

surgeon.

De Chauliac adds a list of sixteen signs of leprosy, which, from their

not being constant, he terms equivocal (_equivoca_). Among these he

gives tuberosity and hardness of the flesh, particularly of the joints

and extremities; insensibility and feeling of torpor in the limbs;

falling off of the hairs; tubercles (_grana_) under the tongue and

palpebræ, and behind the ears; an unctuous condition of the skin, as

seen when water is thrown upon it; with symptoms from the blood, urine,

etc. “By these unequivocal and equivocal signs, lepers (says he) are

examined; but (he judiciously goes on to observe), in the examination

and judgment of lepers there must be much circumspection, because the

injury is very great, whether we thus submit to confinement those that

ought not to be confined, or allow lepers (_leprosos_) to mix with the

people, seeing the disease is contagious and infectious. Therefore ought

the physician repeatedly to examine the affected, and consider and

re-consider those signs which are unequivocal, and those that are

equivocal, and let him not venture to judge by one sign, but by a

concourse of many, and particularly of those that are unequivocal.”

De Chauliac subsequently details at great length the precise mode in

which the physician ought to conduct the examination of every suspected

case of leprosy referred to him. The patient is, first of all, as we

shall afterwards see, recommended to be consoled upon his unfortunate

lot, and sworn in to tell the truth in answer to all the interrogatories

put to him. In immediately afterwards proceeding to the examination

itself, De Chauliac orders inquiries to be instituted into the

predisposition, hereditary or otherwise, of the suspected individual; if

he were exposed by intercourse with the infected; if his mind were clear

and tranquil; if he feels punctures in the flesh, etc. He then

recommends the pulse to be examined, and some blood drawn, and treated

in such a manner by inspection and straining, as to ascertain its

colour, its sediment, the quality of its coagulum, etc. After this he

recommends the countenance to be considered, and the patient dismissed

for the day, with an order to bring a specimen of his urine with him on

the following morning. “In the meantime,” he adds, “let the physician

cogitate upon what he has seen, and what he may yet see in the case.

“On the morrow, when the suspected person returns to the physician, let

the latter, in the first place, examine the urine, and consider if it

shows any sign of disposition towards leprosy. All this being done, let

him next again consider the face, and ascertain in regard to the

eyebrows if they have lost their hair, and if they are swollen and

tuberose; if the eyes themselves are round, particularly towards the

internal angles, and if the whites of them are of a darkish hue; in

regard to the nose, if it be deformed, enlarged, and internally

ulcerated; in regard to the eyes, if they are rounded and shortened; in

regard to the voice, if it is raucous and nasal; in regard to the lips

and tongue, if they are ulcerated and tuberculated; if the breathing be

difficult and fœtid; and if the features be changed and frightful.

And let the examiner consider these things deeply, because the signs

from the face are more certain than the others. Afterwards make the

person strip himself naked (_ipsum expoliare_), and examine concerning

the colour of the whole body, if it is darkish and morphous; concerning

the substance of the flesh, if it is hard and irregular, and tuberose,

particularly about the joints and extremities; if it is scabrous,

pruriginous, or serpiginous and ulcerous; if its corion is rough, like

the skin of the goose; and if the muscles are consumed; if there is a

feeling of sleeping in the limbs; if he feels perfectly when pricked

along the back of the leg, and is certain in respect to the spot and

kind of instrument. Then pour water upon his body, and see if it is

unctuous, and if salt adheres to it when it is thrown upon its surface.

Lastly, let the physician return again to the consideration of the face

and countenance, and with that dismiss the person.

“Let all the ascertained signs (cautiously, adds our author) be pondered

over, and let the physician deliberate naturally concerning these signs,

both individually and in concourse. If he should find that the suspected

person has, along with a disposition to leprosy, some of the slighter

equivocal signs of the disease, the individual is to be watched at his

own house, and secretly, that he may be placed upon a good regimen, and

have the advice of medical men, otherwise he will truly become leprous.

If, however, he presents many equivocal with a few of the unequivocal

signs, he is vulgarly termed _cassatus_ (marked, denounced); and such

individuals must be narrowly watched, in order that they take a proper

regimen, and have the good advice of physicians; and in order that they

confine themselves within their own houses and mansions. Let them not

freely mix with the people, because they are sinking into leprosy. If,

again, they are found with many, both of the unequivocal and equivocal

signs, they must be separated with kind and consoling words from the

people, and committed to the leper hospitals (_in Malanteria ducendi_).

But if they are sound they must be set free (_absolvendi_), and sent

with a medical certificate to the Rector.”

It would, I believe, be considered altogether a work of supererogation

to append to the preceding details by Gordon and Guy de Chauliac any

formal remarks in the way of comparing the _Lepra_ of the fourteenth

century with the _Elephantiasis Græcorum_ of Bateman, Schedel, or any of

our modern standards, and thus insisting further upon the perfect and

entire identity of the individual disease passing under these two

different designations. The accounts given of the malady by the two

ancient and the two modern writers just named, undoubtedly agree as

exactly as we ever find the accounts of one and the same disease by four

different authors do; and, as I have already said, the same remark might

be extended to the relative early descriptions of the lepra, as left by

numerous other authors in these times, and the recent descriptions of

the _Elephantiasis Græcorum_, as drawn up from personal observation in

different parts of the world by Kinnis, Ainslie, Heineken, Casan,

Cazenave, and the other modern writers that I shall afterwards have

occasion to refer to when speaking of the present geographical

_habitats_ of the disease.

But indeed the intrinsic evidence which is afforded by the extracts that

I have given from Gordon and De Chauliac, and by the other similar

descriptions to which I have referred in the works of the medical

authors of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, renders it

unnecessary to add here any further comment to prove the double

proposition, _first_, that the leprosy of the middle ages, as the

disease prevailed upon the continent of Europe, was identical with the

_Elephantiasis Græcorum_; and, _secondly_, that it was for the victims

of this specific malady that the numerous leper hospitals were

established, they alone being the individuals who were intended to be

(in the language of Gordon and De Chauliac) adjudged, separated from

the people, and consigned to the lazar-houses (“_judicati_”—“_a populo

sequestrandi_”—“_in Malanteria ducendi_”).

So far with regard to leprosy, as seen and described by the early

continental authors. Let us now return to the nature of the disease as

it prevailed in Great Britain.

2. _Nature of the Leprosy in England._—Reasoning analogically, it may

certainly, with the greatest probability, be presumed that the incurable

disease which is known in the lazar-house charters and older histories

of this country, under the same name as on the continent,—which

prevailed here during the same periods as on the continent,—and for

which the same systems of medical seclusion and police were

adopted,—was entirely the same disease as that described by and known

to the continental medical authors of the middle ages.

To some minds, such considerations may in themselves be sufficient to

fix the identity of the disease, as it prevailed on the continent, and

as it prevailed in our own country; and certainly they tend very

strongly to show that if, as I have attempted to prove, the epidemic

leprosy of continental Europe was the tubercular or Arabian leprosy, the

leprosy of England and Scotland was of the same specific nature. But I

believe I can adduce still more direct and satisfactory evidence to

establish this important point.

The first valuable medical work by an English author that has been

transmitted to us is the _Compendium Medicinae_ of Gilbert.[182]

This author is generally supposed to have lived about 1270, in the reign

of Henry III. or Edward I.[183] Bale places him even much earlier.[184]

Gilbert has a chapter headed “De Lepra.” In this chapter he describes

very minutely the four usual modifications of lepra (the Elephantia,

Leonina, Tyria, and Alopecia), varieties which, he himself observes, are

rarely found pure and simple, but generally mixed together

(_compositas_).[185] To quote in proof of this his long and very

detailed account of the disease would occupy much space and only lead to

repetition. That the description, however, which Gilbert has drawn of

the leprosy of the middle ages is one of the most just and accurate

penned during these times, has been often and freely admitted by

Sauvages, Sprengel, and other competent judges. Further, that the lepra

as described by Gilbert, and as understood by him and his contemporaries

in England, meant the elephantiasis of the Greeks, is evident (without

going into particulars) from the simple fact, that the sagacious

Sauvages refers to and quotes this chapter of Gilbert’s on lepra as one

of the best descriptions extant of Greek elephantiasis.[186]

In an official report given in to the Royal Society of Medicine of Paris

in 1782, upon the Greek elephantiasis, the reporters, MM. Chamseru and

Coquereau, specially allude to Gilbert’s description as the most clear

exposition of it to which they could refer.[187] Again, in an analysis

of the works of this early English author, the learned Professor

Sprengel observes, “Gilbert sometimes relates, though very rarely,

observations which are proper to himself, and which deserve to be

quoted. In this number I include particularly those concerning leprosy.

We may almost look upon them as the first exact description which has

been given of that malady by the Christian physicians of the west. The

spots which foretell it, and the signs of its first invasion, are at

least described by him in a manner agreeable to nature,” etc.[188]

Here, then, we have the direct and positive evidence of an English

physician of the thirteenth century, that the term lepra was then used

in this country specially to designate the varieties of Greek

elephantiasis; and I might adduce (if it were at all necessary), to

demonstrate exactly the same circumstance, the chapter which John of

Gaddesden, Professor of Medicine in Merton College, Oxford,[189] and

Court physician to Edward II., has devoted to lepra or elephantiasis in

his famous _Rosa Anglica_, a work written towards the commencement of

the succeeding or fourteenth century.[190] In this “Opus luculentum et

eruditum” (as at least Leland terms it),[191] the author describes at

considerable length the nature, causes, and premonitory signs, etc., of

lepra and its varieties, and enters minutely into the pathognomonic

signs (signa demonstrativa infallibilia) of the disease, as respectively

taken from the face, from the extremities, from the blood, and from the

humours of the body. A quotation from his signs of leprosy, as taken

from the face, will at once show that by that term (lepra) he meant the

Greek elephantiasis. I shall give the passage in his own words. “A

_Facie_, rotundatio oculorum, contractio palpebrarum, lacrimositas multa

et aquositas oculorum, depiliatio superciliorum et grossities eorum;

dilatatio narium exterius et constrictio interius, et coartatio

anhelitus, quasi si cum naribus loqueretur. Et color faciei lividus

vergens ad fuscedinem mortificatam. Terribilis aspectus faciei cum fixo

intuitu. Contractio et palpebrarum et aurium. Infectio cutis maculosa.

Tuberositas et pustulae in facie et nodositas. Ista omnia et major pars

sunt infallibilia signa lepræ actualis.”[192] In a subsequent part of

his chapter on Lepra, John of Gaddesden strongly states, that “no one is

to be adjudged a leper, and separated from intercourse of mankind (_ab

hominum conversatione separandus_), until the figure and form of the

face is actually changed. Hence cancer (gangrene?) in the feet, or foul

scabbing, must not be considered as arguing the presence of leprosy, nor

nodosities, unless they appear on the face and with the aforesaid

conditions.”[193]

The testimony of Bartholomey Glanville, an English author of the latter

part of the fourteenth century,[194] may be adduced in support of the

same view. In his work “De Proprietatibus Rerum” he describes persons

affected with leprosy (lepra) as having “redde Whelkes and Pymples in

the Face, out of whome oftenne runne Blood and Matter: in such the Noses

swellen, and ben (become) grete, the vertue of Smellynge faylyth, and

the Brethe stynkyth ryght fowle.” When, he further observes, the disease

is so advanced that the infected are “unclene, spotyd, glemy, and

quyttery (ichorous), the Nosethrilles ben stopyl, the Wasen of the Voys

is rough, and the Voys is horse, and the Heere [hair] falls.”[195]

In addition to the preceding direct medical evidence, it may not be

considered irrelevant to the present question to remark that, in most of

the lazar-house charters and notices in England and Scotland that I have

had access to, the inmates of these institutions are described by the

adjective _leprosus_, or by some application of the corresponding noun

_lepra_, as “lepra percussi,” “infecti lepra.” I have, however, met with

one very striking exception to this general rule, and I allude to it

here as confirmatory of what I have stated with regard to the nature of

the disease for which these leper hospitals were instituted in our own

country. The leper hospital of Sherburne was, as I have already had

occasion to mention, endowed for sixty patients, and was hence one of

the largest in England. It was founded in 1181 by Hugh Pudsey, “the

jollie Bishope of Durham.” In a MS. History of the Durham Cathedral and

Diocese, in the Bodleian Library,[196] the inmates of the Sherburne

Hospital, instead of being termed _Leprosi_, are directly designated

_Elephantuosi_. In speaking of the acts of Bishop Pudsey, the MS.

states, amongst other things, that he constructed the hospital of

Sherburne, and planted in it lepers collected from all parts of the

bishoprick. (_Elefantuosos_, in Episcopatu suo circumquaque collectos,

ibidem instituit.)

NATURE OF THE LEPROSY OF SCOTLAND.

I have hitherto said nothing to show that the disease in Scotland was of

the nature of Greek elephantiasis. During the earlier ages at which it

prevailed in this country, medicine was little cultivated, and we have

no professional work of any kind left us by the Scottish physicians of

that period, from which to derive any evidence on this subject.[197]

Amidst this dearth, however, of medical writings during the middle ages

in Scotland, it gives me pleasure to refer to a passage in one of our

earliest Scotch poets, affording proof that the leprosy of this country

was, as on the continent, truly the Greek elephantiasis.

It is well known to the lovers of early Scotch literature that Henryson,

a schoolmaster of Dunfermline, who wrote before the year 1500, composed,

among other things, _The Testament of Cresseid_ as a sequel to the

_Troilus and Cresseid_ of his immediate predecessor Chaucer.[198]

Indulging, like his English prototype, in the wildest forms of

anachronism, the Scottish poet confessedly subjects, in almost every

particular, the ancient and foreign characters of the piece to the

manners, incidents, and institutions of his own times, and of his own

country. In this spirit he afflicts, at last, the fickle and unfortunate

Cresseid with leprosy, as perhaps the most appalling of dooms to which

he could consign her. The poet afterwards sends her “unto yone hospitall

at the tounis’ end.” The particular symptoms which he makes Saturn

invoke upon Cresseid, to transform her into a leper, are exactly the

most marked symptoms of Greek elephantiasis:

Thy cristall ene (eyes) minglit with blude I mak,[199]

Thy voice sa cleir unpleasand, hoir, and hace,

Thy lustie lyre (fair skin) ouirspread with spottis blak,

And lumpis haw (livid[200]) appeirand in thy face;

Quhair thow cummis, ilk (each) man sall fle the place;

Thus sall thow go begging fra hous to hous,

With cop and clapper like ane Lazarous.

In this remarkable passage, those more striking symptoms, the

swellings, lumps, or livid tubercles on the face, the morbid alteration

of the voice and skin, and that turgid and injected appearance of the

eye, which Dr. Good has given as one of his characteristic symptoms of

the _genus_ elephantiasis, are all tersely, yet accurately described.

Indeed, if Sauvages, Swediaur, Cullen, or any of our great nosologists

of the last or present century, had been poets, I greatly doubt

whether, with all their medical knowledge to boot, they could, in four

fettered lines of rhyme, have described the Greek elephantiasis more

faithfully and briefly than we have it described in the four first lines

that I have just quoted from the Dunfermline schoolmaster of the

fifteenth century. Henryson’s account of a leper may not be so

poetically beautiful, but it is pathologically much more true than that

which the American poet, Willis, has recently given of the disease in

his well-known poem of _Helon_. We shall afterwards find that “the cop

and clapper,” alluded to in Henryson’s two last lines, were badges

commonly carried by the inmates of the leper hospitals of Scotland.

In passages subsequent to that which I have quoted, Henryson reiterates

some of the more prominent symptoms. Thus, the hapless Cresseid

afterwards describes what is elsewhere termed “her uglye lipper face,

the whilk before was quhite (white) as lilie flour,” as “deformed in the

figour;” and again also she describes and laments the characteristic

morbid change in the voice:

“My cleir voice and my courtlie carrolling

Is rawk (rank) as roke, full hideous, hoir, and hace.”

But I have still further and stronger proof to adduce that the leprosy

of the Scotch was the tubercular lepra or Greek elephantiasis. It has

been already stated that the disease continued to prevail in the

Shetlands, apparently long after it had left all the more southern parts

of the British Islands. We have found Brand stating in 1700,[201] the

disease to be “discovered (I quote his own words) by hairs falling from

the eyebrows, the nose falling in,” etc. I have shown also that in some

districts of Shetland the disease continued to a later date, and that,

down to 1742, the infected were kept in the island of Papa, or, as it is

sometimes written, Papastour. Through Mr. Charles Duncan, who has kindly

exerted himself in Shetland to procure me information on the present

subject, I have been favoured with the sight of an old but important

document relative to the lepers of Papa, and the symptoms under which

they laboured. The document in question was, as Mr. Duncan informs me,

drawn up for Sir John Pringle, by the Rev. Andrew Fisken, minister of

Delting, Walls, and Sandness. The old copy I refer to belongs to the

Rev. James Barclay (son of the late Dr. Barclay of Lerwick), and I

publish its contents with his permission. The minute description which

it gives of the symptoms in the lepers of Shetland can leave no doubt as

to the disease under which they suffered being the true tubercular

leprosy, or _Elephantiasis Græcorum_, and the value of the evidence

which it affords on this point is only increased by the fact, that the

writer did not himself belong to the medical profession. The importance

of the document must plead as an excuse for its length. The copy which

is quoted below, is marked on the back, in an old handwriting, “Case of

the Lepers in Papa, as drawn up by Mr. Andrew Fisken, about the year

1736 or 1737.” It proceeds as follows:—

“There are in the Island of Papastour in Zetland five women who labour

under a disease that, generally in this place, gets the name of

Leprosie, though others alledge it deserves rather to be called a

scurvy. The disease has the following appearances, viz.—

“The persons affected at first find an unusual itching in their skin,

with small, knotty, hard lumps to be felt under the cuticle; their whole

body appears plumper than ordinary, and their eyes are observed to be

clearer coloured, with a look more piercing than formerly. Their face

and legs are full of small lumps or hard tumours, which in a little

suppurate and throw out a black, thin, ichorous matter, and gradually

encrease, especially in the face, till they turn confluent. It is also

observed that where these lumps do not appear, the skin feels hard and

callous, like a piece of unwrought leather, and the cuticle smoother

than ordinary, and unctuous or greasy, which appears from pouring water

into the palms of their hands, where it will separate into small

globules, such as appear when water is poured out of a greasy vessel.

The extraordinary plumpness, or rather swelling of the body, observed in

the beginning of this disease, does, in a few months, disappear, and

they turn very lean and weak, only their face always, and sometimes also

their legs, continue swelled. A great many little lumps like small hard

seeds are then to be felt everywhere under their skin, which gradually

increase till they break out externally, throwing out a fœtid thin

ichor, which ceases to run in a little time, and a hard scab covers the

part, which sometimes dries, and falling off, leaves the skin entire; at

other times breaks out again, and runs as before. The hair falls off

from their eyebrows, and they have their throats much inflamed,

especially the uvula, which is gradually (and after some years

continuing under the disease) entirely destroyed. Their voice is so

weakened that they cannot speak louder than one whispering. They have

frequent flushes of heat in their skin, which is succeeded by an

universal chilliness, and they are not at that instant able to suffer

the cold air without a very acute soreness in their skin. As the disease

encreases, it appears still the more frightful and loathsome; their face

full of large and deep ulcers, resembles somewhat a lump of rotten cork;

their gums and teeth are quite rotten, and in the night-time they are

much troubled with deep-seated pains in their bodies, and have in the

day-time frequent stitches and pains in all parts of their body, with a

general weight and inactivity of their limbs. The women also cease to

have their menstrua upon their being seized with this distemper. Their

appetite and digestion is as good as ordinary; their stools regular;

nothing extraordinary to be observed in their urine. They sleep pretty

well, but seldom or never sweat any.

“This disease is found by experiment to be very infectious, and seems

also to run in blood, most people that have taken it without infection

from another having been related to three families in the isle. It

affects any age or sex, and it is observed that young persons bear it

longer than those of a more advanced age, some having lived ten years

under it, others only two, some four, some six, etc., but none ever

recover after the symptoms above-written do appear. The persons that

fall into this direful case are, as soon as it is observed, obliged to

retire to a solitary little hut, built on purpose for them, at a

distance from all houses, and are not allowed any converse with their

husbands, wives, or nearest relations, but have their necessaries of

life furnished them by a contribution from all the inhabitants of the

isle, and brought to their hut, which they take in when the person who

brought it has retired to the windward of their house at some distance.

“There has never been any cure of this disease attempted here, save that

a few years ago a young woman in a neighbouring parish had some bolusses

of mercury given her in order to a salivation; but some dangerous

symptoms appearing, the administrator thought fit to proceed no further,

and the patient continues still alive in the same case she was before

taking the mercury.”

In the voluminous MS. Medical Notes, bequeathed by Sir John Pringle to

the College of Physicians of Edinburgh,[202] I find a copy of the above

account of the Papa lepers. Sir Andrew Mitchell of Westshore seems to

have transmitted the account to him without giving any notice of the

writer of it. It is entered in Sir John’s notes under the date of 1759;

but it was without doubt drawn up many years previously. I have already

alluded to an entry in the Session Records of Walls, regarding the

disappearance of leprosy from that parish and district in 1742. The

entry seems to have been made at a sitting of the session “at

North-house in Papastour;” and its expressions[203] show that at the

date of it (17th March 1742) there were no lepers in Papa. From the MS.

extracts furnished to me by Mr. Rannie, session-clerk, it appears that

there is only mention of one other instance afterwards in the

Session-books of the parish, viz. in December 1772 and 1776. The female

who was the subject of it, and whose case is represented in the records

as “singularly clamant,” was ordered to be provided, at the expense of

the session, “with back and bed clothes, a house fit for her to lodge

in, and maintenance to be brought to her daily at the house.” Mr. Rannie

further states, “I have been informed by old persons that she lived but

a short time after she was put into the house built for her in the

common, at a distance from other houses.” He adds, “It has been reported

to me that in Papa, about the year 1778, a leprous woman was put out and

died in the fields before a house could be built; and that about the

same time there were leprous persons in the district of Watness, and

that the son and daughter of a man Henry Sinclair were infected and sent

to the hospital at Edinburgh.”

At a still later date a case of Shetland leprosy was detected in the

Edinburgh Infirmary. In 1798, a male patient from Shetland was for some

time in the hospital wards, under the care of various physicians. As the

form of disease under which he laboured was considered as very

anomalous, Dr. Thomson was requested by Dr. Hamilton to visit the

patient, and detected the case to be one of Greek elephantiasis. I am

kindly permitted to extract the following notes of the case from Dr.

Thomson’s manuscripts:—

“His face was studded all over with small subcutaneous tubercles. The

skin over these tubercles was of a reddish colour, intermixed with

blotches, like those which occur in the _pityriasis versicolor_. The

hair of the eyebrows and eyelids had fallen off, and the skin of the

face, as well as of most of the rest of the body, seemed as if smeared

with oil. His voice was weak and hoarse, so that he seemed to speak as

in a whisper. On inspecting the fauces, they appeared in some places raw

and excoriated, and in others rough and puckered. A slight ulceration

was perceptible on the _septum narium_, and the nose seemed a little

depressed. In various parts of the body, particularly on the arms,

thighs, and legs, besides the small subcutaneous tubercles, other larger

ones were to be perceived by feeling for them. These larger bumps or

tubercles, which were not perceptible to the eye, and which did not

occasion any discoloration of the skin, were without pain, and had a

striking resemblance to the tubercles occurring in the flesh of those

affected with scurvy.”

The patient, John Berns, was 28 years of age. On making inquiry, it was

found (as I am informed by Dr. Thomson) that some of his ancestors had

been affected with the same disease.

An accurate drawing of the morbid appearances presented by Berns’ face

was made at the time by Mr. Syme, now Professor of Drawing in the Dollar

Academy. A copy of this drawing, with a history of the patient’s

ailments, was forwarded to the late Dr. Willan; and I have Dr. Thomson’s

authority for stating that Dr. Willan at once declared it also as his

opinion, that Berns’ case was a genuine instance of the tuberculous

leprosy or _Elephantiasis Græcorum_; a disease of which, as he informed

Dr. Thomson, he had only seen one example in a patient shown him by Dr.

Baillie.

Let us for a moment recapitulate the preceding evidence, with regard to

the nosological nature of the English and Scottish leprosy:—_First_,

various authors who personally witnessed the leprosy of the middle ages

upon the Continent of Europe, in describing it, have described a disease

having all the most characteristic symptoms of Greek elephantiasis.

_Secondly_, in England a cutaneous disease prevailed at the same period,

bearing the same name,—presenting the same chronic incurable

character,—having its victims subjected to the same civil laws and

restrictions,—marked (as we know from Gilbert, Gaddesden, and

Glanville’s observations and writings) by the same train of nosological

symptoms—and hence identical in nature with the continental disease and

with the elephantiasis of the Greeks. _Thirdly_, in Scotland we find a

malady having the same similarity in its general date,—in its name,—in

its course,—and in the civil regulations enforced regarding it, with

its symptoms, as they are accidentally described by Henryson in the

sixteenth century, identical with those of Greek elephantiasis.

_Fourthly_, in a part of the country where the disease has continued to

prevail down to a later period, the infected, as described by

eye-witnesses in the earlier part of the last century, presented the

most unequivocal signs of the affection alluded to. And, _lastly_, we

have as high medical evidence as could be adduced in regard to cutaneous

affections (the evidence, namely, of Drs. Willan and Thomson), for

asserting that the malady was seen in the members of a Shetland family

in which it had been hereditarily transmitted,—and hence, in one of the

last, if not the very last Scotch leper, was decidedly marked by the

true and genuine characteristics of the _Elephantiasis Græcorum_.

LEPROSY IN THE NORTHERN COUNTRIES LYING NEAREST TO SHETLAND.

On a former occasion I alluded to the existence of true tubercular

leprosy in the neighbouring Faroe Isles, in Iceland, and the nearest

coast of Norway, as corroborative of the disease which has long existed

in the Shetlands being of the same nosological nature. I might now, if

additional proof were necessary, reverse the order of the evidence which

I have just brought forward, and proceed to show at length that the

disease which long existed, and still does remain, in Bergen and

Iceland, and for which leper hospitals also are still maintained in

these localities, is, in reality, the tubercular leprosy or Greek

elephantiasis; and, from this point, argue back, that the disease which

formerly prevailed in Shetland,—and, if in Shetland, in Scotland

generally,—was of the same nosological nature. On this head, however, I

shall content myself with offering a very few observations in proof of

the specific character of the malady in the districts lying most

contiguous to Shetland, and leave without further comment the inference

deducible from such evidence.

_In the Faroe Isles._—These islands form the nearest land north of the

Shetlands. The great cutaneous disease which formerly infected the

inhabitants of Faroe had all the characters of tubercular leprosy. In

proof of this, I may appeal to the description of the malady, given in

the seventeenth century by Debes, who was Provost of the churches in

these islands, and wrote an account, which was much esteemed at the

time, of the country and its inhabitants. He observes, “As for the

Leprosye itself, I would not omit, for the reader’s sake, to mention

something of its nature. Physicians write that there are three sorts of

Leprosies; namely, Tyria, from the serpent Tyrus. In this leprosy, the

patient’s skin is soft, and sometimes falleth off in shells, and they

have many spots and white wartes thereon. The second is called Alopecia,

by reason the hairs fall off as those of a fox; he that is infected with

this leprosy hath a red face, and his beard and eyebrows fall off. The

third sort is called Elephantiasis, from the elephant, to whom they

become like in their skin; the body and face of him that is infected

with this disease is full of knobs. The Leprosie wherewith they are

troubled in this country is usually Elephantiasis, for the face and

limbs of almost all the infected are full of blue knobs, that break out

sometimes as boyls, whereby they look very deformed in the face, being

besides all hoarse, and speaking through their noses.”[204]

_Iceland._—That the leprosy of Iceland (the next land north of the

Faroe Isles) is of the nature of the _Elephantiasis Græcorum_, is a

point which might be proved by any of the descriptions of it by

Petersen, Troil, Henderson, and Holland. Dr. Holland’s account is more

concise than the others. He states—

“The leprosy of the Icelanders (_Likthra_, _Holdsveike_, or

_Spitelska_), exhibits in many instances all the essential characters of

the genuine elephantiasis or _Lepra Arabum_; and is a disease of the

most formidable and distressing kind. Indolent tumours of the face and

limbs are, generally, among the first symptoms of the complaint,

attended by swellings of the salivary, inguinal, and axillary glands.

The nostrils, ears, and lips are progressively affected with swelling

deformity. The skin over the whole, or different parts of the body,

becomes thick and hard; sometimes exhibiting a shining or unctuous

surface, sometimes one rough and scabrous, which at a more advanced

period of the disease displays numerous cracks or fissures. The senses

are usually much enfeebled; and anæsthesia of the extremities generally

occurs. The voice assumes a peculiar hoarseness and nasal tone,

frequently with swelling of the tonsils, but without any hindrance of

deglutition until the disease has made great progress in the habits of

the patient: the breath and perspired matter are extremely fetid; and

the hairs and nails frequently fall off. The tumours in different parts

of the body gradually pass into malignant ulcers, which discharge an

acrid unhealthy matter; in this state the patient often lingers during a

long time; or where the disease has a more speedy termination, all the

symptoms are rapidly aggravated, and he is carried off in a state of

extreme debility and wretchedness.”[205]

The lepers in Iceland are received into four different hospitals, which

have been long established for that purpose.[206]

_Norway._—Returning again to Shetland as a starting point, we find that

the part of the continent of Europe which lies nearest to Shetland, and

that in nearly a direct line westward, is the district of Bergen in

Norway. The distance between Shetland and the seaport of Bergen does not

exceed thirty geographical degrees. In the first part of the present

essay I offered some reasons for believing that the spedalskhed

prevalent in Bergen was a disease different, on the one hand, from the

radesyge of other parts of Norway, and probably identical on the other

hand with the Greek elephantiasis or tubercular leprosy.

The descriptions of those authors who had observed the disease at Bergen

seemed to justify this view. In 1751 Pontoppidan, the Bishop of Bergen,

cites the account and words which we have above quoted from Debes in

reference to the Faroe Isles, as exactly applying to the disease in the

district of Bergen. When it at last (he states) breaks out in ugly boils

on the face, they are generally sent to hospitals erected for that

purpose, of which there is one at Bergen and another at Molde in

Romsdalen.[207] The excellent account of the disease in the Bergen

hospital, which was drawn up a few years ago by the preacher Wellhaven,

shows the malady to correspond in every important particular with the

Greek elephantiasis;[208] and the long and more strictly medical

description of the Bergen disease given in 1786 by Buchner,[209]

appeared to be altogether confirmatory of the same opinion. I have

lately become acquainted with a proof to the same effect, of such a

strong character as to render it supererogatory to adduce the detailed

descriptions of Buchner or Wellhaven in evidence. The Norwegian

Government has recently (and with an anxiety towards the promotion of

medical science that reflects little honour on the other richer courts

of Europe) commissioned some of its more distinguished physicians to

institute a complete inquiry into the nature of the endemic cutaneous

diseases both of Norway and of other localities. Since the former part

of the present paper was printed, Dr. Fäye of Christiania has, as one of

these commissioners, visited this country with the purpose of examining

into the nature of the Scottish sibbens, etc.; and I have learned from

him with pleasure that the physician sent to Bergen to examine the

spedalskhed, is prepared, after a careful study of the disease there, to

report it as tubercular leprosy, and hence a species of malady perfectly

distinct from the more general Scandinavian radesyge.

The date of the first appearance of leprosy in the Faroe Isles and in

Iceland seems to remain undetermined.[210] In both localities it

appears to have prevailed severely in the fifteenth and sixteenth

centuries.[211] In all probability, however, it was introduced long

previous to these dates. At all events, it appeared much earlier in

Bergen, for, as I have already stated in the first part, one of the

leper hospitals in that city was founded as early as the year 1268.

There is no evidence, as far as I know, of the period of its first

appearance in Shetland. It had reached, however, as far as the north of

Scotland early in the thirteenth century; for, as we have already shown,

the leper hospital of Elgin was in existence in the year 1226,[212] or

more than forty years, at least, previously to the institution of

similar receptacles for the diseased in Bergen.

ERRORS IN ADJUDGING INDIVIDUALS TO THE LEPER HOSPITALS—CAUTIONS

INCULCATED BY THE MEDICAL AUTHORITIES.

While arguing, as I have done in the preceding paragraphs, to show that

the epidemic leprosy for which so many lazar-houses were formerly

founded in Europe and in Great Britain was the Greek elephantiasis, I

by no means wish to insist that patients affected with that disease

alone were admitted into these receptacles. There is only too great

probability for the belief that persons who had the misfortune to be

affected with any foul and inveterate cutaneous malady were isolated and

shut up along with those actually labouring under true leprosy. After

syphilis appeared, towards the commencement of the sixteenth century,

with some analogous symptoms, and when the elephantiasis itself was

already disappearing from most localities, we know for certain that a

large proportion of the inmates of the continental lazar-houses

consisted of cases of secondary venereal and other severe

skin-affections. Dr. Bateman[213] adduces the strongest possible

evidence in proof of this from the direct and personal observations made

in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the leper hospital at Ulm

by Horst, at Alcmaer by Forrestus, and by Reedlin at Vienna. Similar

errors were in all probability only too common even when the

elephantiasis was more common and better known, and mistakes in the

selection of the proper inmates of the hospitals would constantly occur

in these times, from the kind of persons to whom the responsible and

important task of selecting the infected was entrusted. The Act that we

have already quoted of the Perth Parliament “anent lipper-folk” defines

those who were charged in Scotland with the duty of searching out the

affected. In the third clause it is statute “That the Bishoppes,

Officialles and Deanes, inquyre diligentlie in their visitation of ilk

(each) Paroch Kirk, gif ony be smitted (affected) with Lipper, and gif

ony sik (such) be foundin, that they be delivered to the king gif they

be Seculares, and gif they be Clerkes, to their Bishoppes, and that the

Burgesses gar (oblige them to) keepe this statute under the paine

conteined in the statute of Beggers [namely, gif they have broken it

(the statute of beggars) they sall be in fourtie shillings to the King];

and quhat leprous that keepis not this statute, that he be banished for

ever off that Burgh, quhair he disobeyis, and in likewise to

Landwart.”[214]

In extenuation of the above edict, we must recollect that, at the period

at which it was enacted (in 1427), the ecclesiastics to whom in this

country it entrusted the selection of lepers were in reality the only

existing physicians of the general community, and some of them seem to

have devoted themselves as much to the practice of medicine as to the

study of theology. But, even to a strictly non-medical observer, the

diagnosis would, in the latter stages, be less free from doubt than

might be at first supposed. For when once the tubercular leprosy became

in any case completely developed in all its distinctive deformity, and

with its full concourse of marked and peculiar external characters, as

falling off of the hairs of the eyebrows, swelling and thickening of

these parts, tubercles of the face, hoarseness of the voice, etc., there

were few or no diseases for which it could be readily mistaken, provided

any proper degree of care was observed. In the earlier stages and less

marked cases of the disease, errors in the adjudgment of cases, in all

probability, often occurred, and affections that had no relation to

elephantiasis, except in their obstinacy and locality, were, we cannot

doubt, frequently mistaken for true instances of tubercular leprosy.

Such errors, it has been often averred, would be almost as apt to happen

in the hands of the truly medical, as of the non-medical examiners, in

consequence of the knowledge and distinction of cutaneous diseases being

exceedingly imperfect at these early periods of medical history. And it

is certainly true that, in the writings of the older Arabian,

Continental, and English physicians, we find almost all the different

species of chronic cutaneous disease mixed up and described together

under a few general heads and designations, as Lentigo, Impetigo,

Morphea, Albaras, Gutta Rosea, etc. Indeed, the proper discrimination and

diagnosis of different cutaneous affections was little known and studied

until the end of the last century. At the same time, however, it must be

recollected that the tubercular lepra, or Greek elephantiasis, certainly

forms a striking exception to this general observation. For, in the

medical writings of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and early part of the

fifteenth century, the leprosy is almost uniformly described with a care

and a minuteness that strangely contrasts with the superficial manner

in which the whole remainder of chronic cutaneous diseases are either

passed over or confounded together.

I would willingly appeal, in support of this last allegation, to the

different chapters on lepra, as compared with those on the other

cutaneous diseases, in the works of the Arabian physicians, and of those

European medical authors of the middle ages whose writings I have

already referred to. Indeed, the accounts and diagnosis of tubercular

lepra, as given by Rhazes, Theodoric, Lanfranc, Arnold de Villeneuve,

Gilbert, etc., might well stand as models of medical description even at

the present day. And if, in France, the strong and earnest injunctions

of Bernhard Gordon were in any degree respected, that no person be

adjudged as requiring separation for leprosy until the second stage

(according to his division of the disease) had supervened, and the

_signa infallibilia_ of the malady had already shown themselves in the

usual marks traceable in the _corruptio figurae et formae_ of the

suspected individual, cases of unjust condemnation to the lazar-houses

would be much less common than might be otherwise imagined. We have

already seen that in England, in the fourteenth century, John of

Gaddesden inculcated the same salutary rules and precautions, and

insisted that no one be separated from the general community as a leper,

unless already “_figura et forma faciei corrumpantur_.”

Certainly, on some occasions, the examination to which the patient was

subjected, in order to ascertain if he were truly a leper or not, seems

to have been of the most searching and scrutinising nature. I have

already alluded to the strict rules of examination that have been

preserved for us in the works of different authors, and quoted the

method recommended by Guy de Chauliac to be followed by physicians

before they remitted suspected patients with medical certificates to the

magistrates (_cum literis medicorum ad rectores_). In the _Examen

Leprosorum_, published by Gesner, and which appears to have been drawn

up as an official formula, if I may so term it, for examining into

suspected cases, the details are most elaborate and searching. There are

between fifty and sixty signs of the disease which the examiner is

requested to look for. Twelve of these signs are taken from the general

state of the body; seven or eight of them from the hands and feet; six

from the blood; five from the face; six from the mouth; eight from the

eyes and eyebrows, etc. etc. The document commences by stating, “that it

is the duty of the physician to be versed in, and attentive to, the

signs of the disease, and to ponder often (_revolvere multoties_) upon

them. He should put his trust (it adds) not in one sign, but in many,

and he should see what signs are proper (_propria_) to the leprosy, and

what are equivocal.” Before making the examination, the document states

that (as is also recommended by Guy de Chauliac[215] and others), the

physician should, in the first instance, give some words of

encouragement and consolation to the patient, and show that this disease

is the salvation of his soul, and that Christ has not despised such,

although the world may shun them (_quod haec aegritudo salus est animae,

et tales Christus non despexit, licet mundus eos fugiat_). Further,

in order to have more certainty in the examination, it is added that the

patient should be made, in the first place, to take oath to tell the

truth on those points on which he is interrogated. We have already found

De Chauliac recommending the examining physician to take the same

precaution, “faciat eos _jurare_ veritatem dicere de interrogendis” (p.

310).

A decree, issued in the year 1314, by Milo, Bishop of Orleans, shows

that it was occasionally necessary to guard the examinators against

being imposed on in other more serious ways, than by direct

prevarications or misstatements on the part of the suspected individuals

who are subjected to their scrutiny. “Whereas it happens that in the

examination of lepers mistakes as to identity, and deceptions, are

caused by the interposition of other persons, we enact and command that

whenever any person is suspected of the infection of leprosy, he be sent

at his own charge if he have effects, but if not, that two responsible

men of the parish having been sworn (_jurati_) before the priest and the

officers of the church (_gajariis ecclesiae_), be sent at the expense of

the parish with the suspected person to obtain the examination; they

shall conduct the said suspected person to the said examination, and

cause him to be faithfully examined, and bring certificates to us, that

it may not be possible that, for the future, collusion should take place

in the aforesaid matters.”[216]

I have not hitherto been able to find any evidence showing to whom the

examination and seclusion of lepers was, in olden times, entrusted in

England; or to trace out in that kingdom any special laws relative to

this subject. There exist, however, upon record, in reference to one

English case in the fifteenth century, some details that are

particularly interesting in regard to the present point of our inquiry.

The details in question have been preserved in Rymer’s _Fœdera_. The

case to which they refer appears to have been brought under the

cognisance of the Crown by the neighbours of the suspected female, in

consequence of her being alleged to be affected with leprosy, and yet

refusing to seclude herself, as was the usual custom, from intercourse

with society in consequence of it. The reigning monarch, Edward IV.,

issued, in 1468, a Chancery warrant for the proper medical examination

of this supposed case of the disease. The royal warrant, and the medical

certificate which it called forth, have both been preserved by Rymer. I

append a translation of these curious documents, as illustrative both of

the general dread then still entertained of the malady, and of the

minute care which, in this country, was occasionally taken, in order

that a just and accurate judgment might be arrived at in cases of doubt

and difficulty. The documents are entered by Rymer under the title of

“Medicorum Regis, super morbo Lepræ, Certificatio.” They proceed as

follows:—

“To the most Excellent and most Serene Prince and Lord in Christ,

Edward, by the Grace of God, King of England and France, and Lord of

Ireland, We, William Hatteclyff, Roger Marshall, and Dominus de Serego,

Doctors of Arts and Medicine, your physicians, and sworn to watch over

the health of your Person, send due Reverence with humility and

worship:—

“Whereas a Petition was made to You in Your Court of Chancery, with

regard to removing _Johanna Nightingale_, of Brentwoode, in the County

of Essex, from general intercourse with mankind (_a communi hominum

consortio_), because it was presumed by some of her neighbours that she

was infected by the foul contact of Leprosy, and was, in fact, herself a

Leper: Upon which Your writ was then prepared, and afterwards directed

to the Sheriff of the said county, in these words:—

“Edward, by the Grace of God, King of England and France, and Lord of

Ireland, to the Sheriff of Essex, Greeting: Whereas We have heard that

_Johanna Nightingale_ is a leper, and is commonly holding intercourse

with the people of the aforesaid county, and mixes with them both in

public and private places, and refuses to retire to a solitary place, as

is customary and befitting her (_et se ad locum solitarium, prout moris

est, et ad ipsam pertineret, transferre recusat_), to the grievous

injury and, on account of the contagion of the aforesaid disease, the

manifest perils of the aforesaid inhabitants: We, willing to guard

against such dangers, as far as in us lies, and as is just and customary

in such cases, Do charge You, that having taken with You certain

discreet and loyal men of the county of the aforesaid _Johanna_, in

order to obtain a better knowledge of this disease, You go to the

aforesaid _Johanna_, and cause her to be diligently viewed and examined

in the presence of the aforesaid men. And if You find her to be leprous,

as was reported of her, then that You cause her to be removed, in as

decent a manner as possible, from all intercourse with other persons,

and have her betake herself immediately (_indilatè_) to a secluded

place, as is the custom, lest by common intercourse of this kind injury

or danger should in any wise happen to the aforesaid inhabitants.

Witness my hand, at Westminster, this day of July, in the eighth year

of Our reign.”

“Wherefore The Reverend Father in God, Robert, by the Grace of God, Lord

Bishop of Bath and Wells, Your Chancellor of England, consulted us on

this subject, and determined to bring the same Johanna to us, with the

intention that, according to what we have learned from our knowledge of

Medicine, we should give information to Your Highness in Your Chancery,

whether the said Johanna be in fact a Leper or not. We, therefore,

wishing to obey Your Highness, in order that the truth on this subject

might be made most plain and clear, have proceeded after this manner.

First, we examined her person, and as the older and most learned medical

authors have directed in these cases, we touched and handled her (_ipsam

tradavimus et palpavimus_), and made mature, diligent, and proper

investigation, whether the symptoms, indicative of this disease, were in

her or not; and after an examination and consideration of each of the

points, which appeared necessary to be examined and considered, in order

to arrive at a true knowledge of this doubtful matter, We found that the

woman neither had been nor was a Leper, nor ought, on that account, to

be separated from ordinary intercourse with mankind.

“We are taught by Medical Science that the disease of Leprosy is known

by many signs, also that each species of the disease, of which there are

four, viz. Alopecia, Tiria, Leonina, and Elephantia, should be known and

characterised by particular signs, and each should be specifically

distinguished from the rest. Therefore, in the case of the woman brought

before us, on going through upwards of twenty-five of the more marked

(_famosiora_) signs of general leprosy (_Leprae in communi_), we do not

find that she can be proved to be leprous, by them or a sufficient

number of them. And this would suffice, generally, to free her from the

suspicion of leprosy, since it is not possible for any to labour under

the disease, in whom the greater part of these signs are not found. But,

in order to give our opinion on the individual species, going through

upwards of forty distinctive signs of the different varieties of

leprosy, we do not find that this woman is to be marked as suffering

under any of the four kinds, but is utterly free and untainted, as we

have signified by word of mouth to Your Highness in Your said Chancery,

and we are prepared to declare the same more fully to Your Highness by

scientific process (_per processum scientificum_), if, and wherever, it

shall be necessary.

“In testimony whereof, we, the said William Hatticlyff, Roger Marshall,

and Dominus de Serego, have signed our name with our proper hands, and

alternately affixed our seals.”

To the preceding document, which is one of the earliest, if not the very

earliest, English medical certificate which either historical or medical

records have preserved, it is added in the form of a note, “Et

memorandum quod praedicti Willielmus Hatteclyff, Rogerus Marchall, et

Dominus de Serego venerunt in Cancellarium apud Westmonasterium, septimo

die Novembris, anno praesenti (1468), et recognoverunt scriptum

praedictum, et omnia contenta in eodem, forma praedicta.”[217]

PART III.

THE ETIOLOGICAL HISTORY OF THE DISEASE.

To conclude the present hurried sketch of the British leprosy of the

middle ages, it now only remains for me to consider, in relation to the

etiology or causation of the disease, the rank, age, sex, etc., of those

that were attacked by it; the effects of its hereditary transmission;

and the question of its propagation by contagion. In connection with

this last subject, I shall attempt to bring together under one view the

stringent regulations and usages that were adopted by our ancestors,

with a view of preventing the diffusion of the disease by means of

communication between the infected and the healthy; and at the same time

consider the light in which the despised lepers were regarded both by

the civil and ecclesiastical law.

RANK OF THE PERSONS ATTACKED BY LEPROSY.

In this country the leprosy of the middle ages seems to have had its

largest share of victims in the lower classes of society—amongst the

“villeyns” or bondsmen of these times, and the poorer peasantry and

burgesses, who, when shut up in the hospitals, were obliged either to

depend upon the funds of these institutions, or to beg for their

support. The exact trade and calling of the individuals admitted into

the Scottish and English hospitals can only be very imperfectly gathered

from one or two casual notices.[218]

Among the patients of Kingcase leper hospital, in Ayrshire, I have only

found one whose rank I can trace. In the burgh of Prestwick[219] records

for 1478-9, Anne Kerd is formally accused before the magistrates of the

burgh of visiting Kingcase, and further “hir seik soun, att is lepper,

repairis daili in her house [in Prestwick].” This Anne Kerd, having “a

sick son that is leprous” seems from the old _Liber Communitatis_, etc.,

_de Prestwick_ of 1470 to have had assigned her a very small fragment of

the burgh lands only, viz. “a porciunkle of commoun lande quilk acht

after hir lyve to John Haveris airis (which belonged after her life

[death] to John Haveris’ heirs).”[220]

Amongst the citizens of Glasgow who were at different times in the

latter part of the sixteenth century ordered by the magistrates to be

visited, under the suspicion of labouring under leprosy, most are

recorded by their mere Christian name and surname; but two or three are

entered in the burgh records in such terms as to show their occupation

and probable rank, as “Robert ——, fleschor,” in 1573; “Mr. James ——,

fleschor,” “Patrick Bogle, maltman,” and “Andro Lawson, merchand,” in

1581.[221] One of these individuals is reported by the Water Bailies as

confined in the Glasgow leper hospital at the Brigend[222] in 1589,

along with five other lepers. The whole list is interesting for our

present purpose, as showing the trade and calling of the infected

inmates, viz. “Andro Lawson, _merchand_; Stevin Gilmor, _cordener_;

Robert Bogill, sone to Patrick Bogle; Patrick Birstall, _tailzeour_;

Johne Thomsoun, sone to Johne Thomsoune, _tailzeour_; Daniel

Cunninghame, _tinclar_.”

I am not aware of the existence of any similar complete list of the

inmates of other British leper hospitals, to which I could refer with

the view of ascertaining the occupation and rank of those that occupied

them. We have scattered records, however, to show that men of riches

occasionally became the victims of the disease, and passed their

subsequent term of life in the leper hospitals. Thus, Jenkins, in

speaking of the St. Mary Magdalene lazar-house at Exeter, states,

“Richard Orange, Esq., a gentleman of noble parentage, and mayor of this

city (Exeter) in 1454, being infected with the leprosy, notwithstanding

his great wealth, submitted himself to a residence in this hospital,

where he lived many years, and finished his days, and was buried in the

chancel of the chapel. His grave, with a mutilated inscription, is still

extant.”[223]

Some of the leper hospitals were specially endowed for persons above the

lower ranks, who happened to become affected with the disease. In 1491,

Robert Pigot gave by will to the leper hospital of Walsingham, in the

archdeaconry of Norwich, a house in or near that town for the use of two

leprous persons “of good families.”[224]

The malady was found among the clergy as well as among the laity, and

some of the English leper hospitals were specially founded for the

reception of leprous monks alone—as the hospital of St. Lawrence, near

Canterbury, and, according to Tanner,[225] that of St. Bartholomew, at

Chatham. From one of the edicts issued by Henry II. during the height

of his quarrel with Archbishop Becket, it would appear that the

dignitaries of the church occasionally did, or at least might, employ

lepers in the high character of nuncios, for, in order to prevent Becket

from putting the kingdom of England under an ecclesiastical interdict,

Henry took all precautions that no official letters to that effect

should be conveyed into Britain; and to secure this object the more

surely, he enacted, that, if any individual did carry thither letters of

interdict from the Pope or Archbishop, he should be punished “by the

amputation of his feet if a regular; by the loss of his eyes and by

castration, if a secular clergyman; he should be hanged if he were a

layman; and burned if he were a leper” (_si Leprosus, comburatur_).[226]

In the extant account of the British leper hospitals, there are still

preserved some instances in which these institutions were founded by the

wealthy and noble after they had themselves become the victims of the

malady. The leper hospital of Mayden Bradley, in Wiltshire, was founded

by a female member of the rich family of the Bysets[227]—Camden alleges

by a daughter of Manasser Byset, sewer to King Henry II., after she had

herself become a leper. “This hospital,” says Leland, “was builded by

one of the three heirs general of the Bisets, who, being a lazar, gave

her part of the town of Kidderminster _in pios usus_.”[228]

If the earlier biographical notices that we possess regarding the

nobility of Great Britain were as minute on their private as on their

martial and political lives, we might probably have to record many more

notices in regard to their bodily maladies of an import similar to the

following:—The youngest son of Robert Blanchmains, Earl of Leicester,

was himself a leper, and in the reign of Richard II. founded a leper

hospital, dedicated to St. Leonard, on the north part of the town of

Leicester.[229]

The royal families of England and Scotland did not always remain exempt

from the suspicion, at least, and accusation of leprosy, if not from the

actual attack of the disease.

Henry III. courted Margaret, Princess of Scotland, and the sister of

Malcolm IV. The royal lady preferred the brave Hubert de Burgh, the

minister of the English king. Hubert’s enemies afterwards alleged to

King Henry, that he (Hubert) had dissuaded the Scottish princess from

accepting the hand of the English monarch, by telling her “that Henry

was a squint-eyed fool, a lewd man, a _leper_, deceitful, perjured, more

faint-hearted than a woman, and utterly unfit for the company of any

fair and noble lady.”—(Articles of Impeachment, as given by

Speed.)[230]

In reference to this unfounded accusation, I may state that Ryland

mentions it as a local tradition that the leper-house of Waterford in

Ireland was founded by King John (the father of Henry III.) in

consequence of his son’s being affected at Lismore with an eruption that

was supposed to be leprosy.[231] But even supposing the tradition

correct, it could scarcely have been Henry the eldest legitimate son of

John, since, at the date of his father’s expedition into Ireland, 1209

and 1210, Henry was a child of only five or six years of age, and in all

probability did not accompany his royal sire.

Different historians have alleged that Henry IV. was affected with

leprosy in the latter part of his life. The immediate cause of his death

seems to have been epilepsy, terminating, after a time, in an apoplectic

attack; and some authors aver strongly that this was his only disease.

Thus, in his Chronicles of England,[232] the celebrated old printer,

Grafton, upholds that Henry was carried off by “a sore and sudaine

disease called an apoplexie.” Hall, an author somewhat anterior in date,

stoutly maintains this same view, for the king’s disease, as he

observes, “was no lepry striken by the hand of God, as folish friers

before declared, for then he neither would for shame nor for debility

enterprize (as he did), so greate a journey as into Jewrie (Jerusalem),

in his own persone, but he was taken with a sore apoplexye.”[233]

Hollinshed,[234] quoting implicitly this account from “Maister Hall,”

gravely adds, and he “had none other greefe nor maladie.” The dogmatic

authority of Hall on this, as on other points, is not to be over much

relied upon.

We have little doubt that Dr. Lingard[235] had some sufficient evidence

from the records of the times, for stating that Henry had at least “the

most loathsome eruptions on his face.” Rapin[236] and Turner,[237] in

their histories of England, both refer to Mezeray as their authority for

averring that these eruptions consisted of leprosy. I find that

Duchesne[238] also describes Henry as weighed down with a severe and

grievous affection of leprosy; and Maydestone[239] alleges that it was

this last disease, and solemnly considers it as a punishment inflicted

on the king for his cruel treatment of Archbishop Scrope. Iohn Hardynge,

whose authority is the more valuable from his being himself a

contemporary of Henry IV., and a follower of his son, Henry V.,

describes in his rhyming Chronicles of English History the face of the

king as disfigured by leprosy. As a portion of the last personal

confessions of the monarch, Hardynge puts into his mouth the following

penitent lamentations regarding the changes which the ravages of the

disease had wrought upon his frame and face:—

“This wormes mete, this carryon full vnquert,

That some tyme thought in worlde it had ne pere;

This face so foule that _Leprous_ doth apere,

That here afore I have had such a pride

To purtraye oft in many place full wyde,” etc.[240]

These observations are certainly by no means sufficient either decidedly

to confirm or controvert the opinion that Henry IV. was affected with

leprosy; but they serve at least to show that, at the time at which he

lived, rank of the highest kind was not considered as any adequate

barrier against an attack of the disease.

In none of these alleged cases of leprosy in the royal family of England

is the proof of the actual existence of the disease at all indubitable

and complete. The evidence is more certain and satisfactory in regard to

the occurrence of the malady, in its genuine form, in other scions of

the House of Anjou than those who ascended the throne of England. I

allude especially to the case of Baldwin IV., King of Jerusalem, a

direct descendant, like the royal Plantagenets of England, from Fulk,

Count of Anjou and Touraine. All historians seem to agree in stating

Baldwin IV. to have laboured for some years under elephantiasis, and to

have ultimately resigned his sceptre in consequence of disability from

that disease. He was, says Fuller, when speaking of him under the year

1174, “enclined to the leprosie called elephantiasis.”[241] By the year

1183, “the leprosie had arrested him prisoner and kept him at home.

Long” (adds the same historian) “had the king’s spirit endured this

infirmity, swallowing many a bitter pang with a smiling face, and going

upright with patient shoulders under the weight of his disease. It made

him put all his might to it, because when he yielded to his sicknesse,

he must leave off the managing of the State; and he was loth to put off

his royal robes before he went to bed, a crown being too good a

companion for one to part with willinglie. But at last he was made to

stoop, and retired himself to a private life.”[242]

The disease, as has been above observed, did not spare the royal family

of Scotland. At least two cases of leprosy are alleged to have occurred

among the members of it. The first and earliest of these, however, is

much more a matter of fable than of fact, and the story, as told us by

Hector Boece and Dempster, is, in all probability, due rather to their

love of historical romance than their knowledge of historical records.

Fiacre, the subject of it, still holds a place as a saint in the

Catholic calendars of France and Germany. Among the long list of

oaths[243] which Rabelais, in his Pantagruel, long ago put into the

mouth of the garrulous Panurge, one is an imprecation “par l’espine de

Saint Fiacre.” This Saint Fiacre or St. Fithulk (as he was sometimes

termed) was the reputed son of Eugenius IV. King of Scotland. Preferring

a cloister to a court, he is said to have retired into France, and to

have led the life of a religious solitary in a cell granted to him by

Pharo, Bishop of Meaux. After his father was dead and his brother

deposed, the Scottish nobles sent a deputation to Fiacre with an offer

of the throne of his ancestors. But “quhen (to state the result in

Boece’s words) thir ambassatouris was brocht to his presence, he apperit

to thair sicht sa ful of _lipper_, that he was repute be thaim the maist

horribill creature in erd” (on earth).[244] Spottiswood fixes the era

of his death in the year 665.[245]

The case of King Robert the Bruce is a more recent and a more

authenticated instance of leprosy in the royal family of Scotland. All

authorities agree in stating that the Bruce suffered under a “lang

seknes,” as Wyntoun[246] expresses it. Froissart, who visited the

Scottish Court in the reign of his grandson Robert II., describes, in

more than one passage, the Bruce as having been afflicted with and died

of “_la grosse maladie_,” “sore greved with ye great sickenes”[247] as

Lord Berners has translated it.[248] In their editions of Froissart’s

works, Sauvage,[249] Buchon,[250] and Johnes,[251] severally comment

upon “la grosse maladie” of Froissart, as signifying the leprosy. I have

already adverted to this expression as being quite synonymous in words

and meaning with the Saxon term for the disease. Further, that Bruce was

really affected with and died of leprosy, seems to be borne out by the

evidence of the older historians. Hemingford, a contemporary of Bruce’s,

describes him as “lepra percussus;”[252] and Walsingham uses the same

language both in his _Chronica_[253] and in his _Ypodigma

Neustriæ_;[254] Boece speaks of Bruce as dying of leprosy (ex lepra fato

concessit);[255] and Buchanan gives to his disease the more unequivocal

name of elephantiasis (“nam in elephantiam incederat”).[256] Leland, in

the translation which he has given in the first volume of his

_Collectanea_ from the famous _Scalacronica_, speaks of ambassadors

being sent from England to “Murrefe (Moray), the guardiane of Scotlande

in the nonage of King Davy, whos fader dyed of the Lepre;”[257] “_qui

mort estoit de lepre_,” in the words of the original works.[258] In the

old and valuable _Chronicle of Lanercost_, which has only been for the

first time printed within the last two years, the disease and death of

the Bruce are mentioned in terms equally precise. In speaking (p. 254)

of Randolph and Douglas entering England in 1326, the Chronicle states

that the Scottish army was not led by Bruce in person, because “factus

erat Leprosus.”[259] His death is thus announced in a subsequent page

(264) of these old and probably contemporary records, under the year

1329, “mortuus est Dominus Robertus Brus, Rex Scotiæ, leprosus.”

I shall close these remarks by alluding to one other reputed case of

leprosy in a descendant of the royal families of Scotland. The

celebrated Constance, Duchess of Britanny, who was allied to the royal

families both of England and Scotland (being a granddaughter of Malcolm

III. of Scotland, and the English Princess Margaret Atheling, and at the

same time a descendant of a natural daughter of Henry I.), is generally

alleged by historians to have suffered and died from leprosy.[260]

William of Nangris (as Lobineau observes) “has shown that she died of

leprosy (_de la lepre_), a disease with which females were occasionally

attacked in these times.” Lobineau places the date of the decease of

Constance in the year 1201.

SEX OF THE LEPERS.

The modern history of tubercular leprosy would seem to show that the

disease attacks the male in a larger proportion than the female sex.

From the table which Dr. Adams collected and published of patients

admitted into the leper-house of Funchal, Madeira,[261] from 1702 to

1803, it appears that during that period 526 infected males were

admitted into the hospital, while the corresponding list of infected

females amounts only to 373. The enumeration of the lepers in the

Glasgow leper hospital in 1589,[262] and those entered into the

Greenside hospital of Edinburgh in 1591 (the only two old lists of

patients of such institutions in Britain that I am acquainted with),

show the diseased inmates of these two establishments to have been all

males. A large proportion of the English lazar-houses seem, from the

language of their charters, to have been endowed entirely for males

(_fratres leprosi_), but, at the same time, we have abundant evidence in

the same documents that females often suffered from the disease.[263]

Some of the lazar-houses were founded and endowed for admitting infected

inmates of both sexes (_fratres et sorores leprosæ_). Thus Tanner states

that the old lazar-house of St. Nicolas, York, contained both male and

female lepers.[264] Mackarell and Bridges both mention the same fact

with regard to the hospitals of St. Nicolas at Lynne Regis,[265] and of

St. Leonard at Northampton;[266] and the inmates of the leper-house of

St. Giles, Shrewsbury, bore, according to Owen and Blakeway,[267] the

style of the prior, brethren and sisters of St. Giles. A few of the

English hospitals were indeed entirely devoted to the reception of

leprous females. Thus the hospital of Mayden Bradley was founded in the

time of Henry II. for those of the female sex only (_pro mulieribus

leprosis_); and the hospital of St. James, Westminster (which, says

Bishop Tanner, stood on or near the place now occupied by the palace of

the same name), was destined, as the renewed charter of Henry III.

bears, for fourteen leprous girls (_quatuordecim Leprosis

puellis_).[268]

AGE OF THOSE ATTACKED—DURATION OF THE DISEASE.

There are no documents (as far as I am aware) which directly throw any

light on the age of the inmates of the leper hospitals. The expression,

however, of _puellæ_, which I have just quoted as applied to the inmates

of St. James’ Hospital, shows the youth not less than the sex of the

inmates of that institution, and so far demonstrates that the disease

then, as it does now, sometimes attacked its victims very early in life.

Baldwin IV. of Jerusalem, (whose case I have already referred to) was

affected with the disease while still a minor, and surrendered his crown

at the age of 23, in consequence of the ravages which the disease had by

that time made upon his constitution. “He died young,” says Fuller, “at

five-and-twenty years of age—a king happie in this, that he died before

the death of his kingdome.”[269]

King Robert the Bruce, another, as we have already seen, of the royal

victims of the malady, died at the age of 55.[270] But it is difficult

to fix the precise date of the first attack of the disease in the case

of the Scottish king, and hence difficult to deduce the exact duration

of the malady in this particular instance. His faithful biographer,

Barbour, describes him as “tuk with sic a sicknes” before the battle of

Inverury in 1307, “that he mycht nothyr rid na ga”[271]—(that he might

neither ride nor walk). Kerr, in his _History of the Life and Reign of

the Bruce_, seems to hint that this was the commencement of the disease

which ultimately carried him off;[272] and indeed Barbour, in a

subsequent part of his poem, describes his fatal malady as

“beguth”—(begun)

throuch his cald lying

Quhen in his gret myscheiff wes he.—P. 407.

But if the affection commenced in so acute a form at that date, it must

have lasted for the long period of twenty-two years, as his death did

not take place till 1329. If the disease under which the king suffered

so severely in 1307 had been leprosy, it would not in all probability

have left his activity and individual prowess for so long a date

unimpaired. The battle-axe which, on the evening before the battle of

Bannockburn, cleft at a single blow the helmet and skull of Henry de

Bohun, could scarcely have been wielded by the arm of one whose body had

for some years previously been the seat of a mortal disease. Some facts,

however, would seem to show that the malady had assumed a marked and

severe form a considerable time before the Bruce’s death. I have already

shown, from the _Chronicle of Lanercost_, that three years before his

demise the Bruce was already so incapacitated by the inroads of the

leprosy that he was unable to undertake the command of the army in their

descent upon the northern counties of England.[273] The same reason

rendered him, as we are informed by Barbour, unable to attend the

peaceful nuptial feast of his son at Berwick in 1328. It may not be

considered uninteresting to add, as a part both of the history of the

man and of the disease under which he was labouring, that during these

three last years of his life, and whilst “the sicknes” affected his body

“so fellely” (to use Barbour’s words), “and him trawaillat sa that he

considered death certen,” his naturally energetic mind was still active

and vigorous. The accounts of his chamberlain, preserved in the Register

House of Edinburgh,[274] show that, during the very last year of his

life, he was busied in making experiments on ship-building and

navigation in his retirement at Cardross Castle, near the banks of the

Clyde, in Dumbartonshire. Within a month before his death, he indited

from this place a letter (the original of which still exists among the

old archives of Melrose Abbey, preserved in the General Register House,

Edinburgh[275]), desiring his heart to be buried within the precincts of

that monastery,—a wish which he changed, a short time before he

expired, into the well-known commission to his favourite follower and

friend, “ye gentle knighte of Douglas,” viz. “I woll yat, as soone as I

am trespassed oute of this worlde, ye take my harte oute of my body, and

embaume it, and present it to the Holy Sepulchre at Jeruslem, saying my

bodie can nat come.”[276]

HEREDITARY TRANSMISSION OF THE LEPROSY.

Few facts in the history of tubercular leprosy seem to be more

universally admitted by all writers on the disease, both ancient and

modern, than the transmission of the predisposition to it from parents

to offspring. The Greek and Arabian physicians considered it as a malady

in which all the fluids of the body were equally diseased (corrumpens

pariter omnes humores corporis). “Fit itaque (adds Haly Abbas, the

well-known Arabian author of the tenth century, in his chapter “De

Elephantia”), cum humoribus spermatis corruptio, cum et humores et

sperma ex sanguine fiant, in tantum, ut in generatione passio haec

transeat in filios.” (Theoric, lib. viii. cap. 15.) Avicenna and the

later Arabian authors, with Theodoric, Lanfranc, and other European

writers of the middle ages, express a similar belief in the hereditary

transmission of the disease; and in the same spirit, our countryman

Gilbert, writing, as we have already seen, in the thirteenth century,

observes, “Lepra est interdum morbus primus, sicut ex spermatibus primis

matris et patris Leprosis. Sanguis enim corruptus interius, qui est

nutrimentum foetus, corrumpit foetum.”[277]

Amid the scattered fragments relative to the former history of leprosy

in this country, it can scarcely be expected that we should have

preserved for us any individual data bearing directly upon the

transmission of the disease from father to son. I have met, however,

with one notice, which, though imperfect, it may not be considered

uninteresting to quote in regard to the present question. In the Burgh

Records of Glasgow for 1581, Patrick Bogle is ordered to be inspected

for leprosy;[278] and eight years afterwards (1589) “Robert Bogill,

_sone_ to Patrick Bogle,” is reported as an inmate of the leper-house

belonging to the city.[279]

It is unnecessary to adduce the opinions of modern authors in support of

the occasional hereditary transmission of leprosy, as all observers who

have described the disease from their own observations, and that in the

most different and distant parts of the world, seem uniformly agreed

upon this point. Dr. Heineken, in his account of the inmates of the

leper hospital at Funchal, Madeira, in 1825,[280] states that in three

of the cases no hereditary taint was known; the aunt of a fourth (p. 21)

was a lazar; the uncle and two brothers of a fifth (p. 18) laboured

under the same disease; the mother, brother, and son of a sixth (p. 19),

were lepers, and all of them affected before himself; and in a seventh

case (a female aged 35) her father, mother, three sisters, and two

brothers, had already all died of elephantiasis.

Among the seven cases of elephantiasis seen by Dr. Kinnis in the

Mauritius,[281] three were Mozambique slaves, and could give no

satisfactory account of their parentage. Of the remaining four—the

first could give no history of her father and mother, but had brothers

and sisters in perfect health: the ancestors of the second patient had

not been affected with leprosy, but her husband had laboured under it

for two years before death: the third case was a daughter of these

parents, and one of her brothers had died of elephantiasis: the fourth

patient appeared to have inherited the predisposition from the family of

his maternal grandmother, who was never attacked herself, but who lost

two sisters and three nieces by the disease.

These and other similar data show that the predisposition to leprosy,

like the predisposition to other hereditary diseases, may occasionally

show itself only in one or two individual members of a family; and may

sometimes lie dormant for one or two generations, to reappear in a

subsequent one. “God and Nature,” says the reverend author of a

description of the Faroe Isles, formerly quoted, “deals wonderfully with

such people (lepers) in their marriages, for amongst the children, they

beget some clean and some unclean. It has also been taken notice of that

two living together in marriage, though the one be found infected, they

live together as before, as long as one doth but murmur of it, till the

magistrate doth separate them, and yet the sound remaineth uninfected;

whereas another is often taken with the disease by a very little

conversation.... What is this? but that God confirms the truth of his

word, taking pleasure in them that live in a just wedlock, and wander in

lawful ways, putting their hopes in him, that neither fire nor water,

contagious disease, nor dangerous pestilence shall hurt them.”[282]

In some of the few districts of Europe in which cases of the disease

have continued to linger down to a late period, the malady seems to be

transmitted through an old hereditary taint in particular families,

rather than generated by existing external circumstances acting on the

bodies of those who now become its victims. The tubercular leprosy

exists still, or at least existed lately, in the districts of Martigues

and Vitrolles[283] in the south of France. The cases, though very few,

have still been well marked. M. Vidal, who, towards the end of last

century, described several instances of the disease which he saw at

Martigues, states that, with one problematical exception, the malady was

in every case hereditary.[284] “May we not,” he adds, “conclude from

this, that if the local causes which are generally assigned for leprosy

be true, they have not, at least in our country, sufficient power to

originate the disease (la faire naître), but generally only to develope

and perpetuate it in the descendants of ancient lepers?”[285] The same

family predisposition probably perpetuated the malady for some

generations in the few cases that occurred in Shetland, in the latter

part of the last century. The case of the Shetlander Berns, as

mentioned in a preceding Part, was an instance in which the disease was

apparently the result of hereditary transmission from his ancestry.

The predisposition from hereditary constitution to leprosy, and some

other diseases, was well known to our forefathers; and, if we place

credit in the account of the “auld manneris” of the Scotch antecedently

to the reign of Malcolm Canmore, as “compilit be the nobil clerke,

Maister Hector Boëce, Channon of Aberdene,” they were accustomed to

practise hygienic measures that were assuredly more summary than humane,

in order to arrest the diffusion of disease by such channels. For, to

quote the words of Boëce:—“He that was trublit with the falling evil

(epilepsy), or fallin daft or wod (insane), or having sic infirmitie as

succedis be _heritage_ fra the fader to the son, was geldit

(_castratus_), that his infekit blude suld spreid na forthir. The women

that was fallin _Lipper_, or had any other infection of blude, was

banist fra the cumpany of men, and gif scho consavit barne under sic

infirmitie, baith scho and hir barne war buryit quik (if she conceived a

child under such infirmity, both she and her child were buried

alive”).[286]

EXTERNAL EXCITING CAUSES OF LEPROSY IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

The investigation of the causes of diseases has, probably more than any

other department of medicine, been marked by belief without evidence,

and assertion without facts. The history of the opinions which have at

different times been so freely offered and adopted with regard to the

production of leprosy, and the numerous explanations which have been

proposed with respect to the causes of its almost epidemic prevalence in

Europe in the middle ages, and its nearly complete suspension in the

same region of the world at the present day, might easily, if time and

space permitted, be made to form a chapter highly illustrative of the

above general remark. The frequency of the disease in former times has

been confidently ascribed by different authors[287] to peculiarities in

the diet, dress, personal and domestic habits, etc., of our forefathers.

And certainly their mode of life was in many respects specially

calculated to generate derangements and eruptions of the skin. The good

old Saxon practice of bathing[288] appears to have become forgotten

after the date of the Norman conquest; and in the subsequent history of

these early times we might trace various indirect and direct causes of

cutaneous disease, in the close hovels and unventilated dwellings of the

period;[289] in the habits of personal uncleanness;[290] in the rough

straw bedding then generally[291] in use, and which “hard lodging”

Hollinshed describes as still used by the servants in his day, “with

seldome (he adds) anie sheete vnder their bodies to keepe them from the

pricking straws that run oft through the canvas, and rase their hardened

hides;”[292] and probably also in the articles of diet[293] on which the

general community were obliged to subsist in times before the

improvement of agriculture, and the introduction of that “schamefull

intemperance” (as old Boece[294] fanatically terms it), “when na fische

in the see, nor foule in the aire, nor beast in the wod may have rest,

but are socht heir and thair to satisfy the hungry appetit.” For the

investigation of this and other allied questions in the history of the

production of our older epidemic and endemic diseases, the works of

Hollinshed, Strutt, Henry, Chalmers, Macpherson, and others, contain a

great and available mass of materials. But, in consequence of the

unforeseen extent to which our present remarks have already lengthened

out, we are forced to abstain from entering into this topic, and

discussing the notes which we have collected in regard to it. At the

same time, however, we may pause to observe that we believe it would be

no easy matter to point out the exact differences in those physical

conditions of the inhabitants of this country in former and in modern

times, which may have led to the prevalence of the disease amongst our

ancestors, and to its disappearance amongst us. If poverty in diet, or

personal wants, and filth, and wretchedness in their deepest degrees,

could generate the malady, there are certainly still numerous spots in

continental Europe, and even in our own land, where, unfortunately, all

these elements of disease are in our own day in full and active

operation, without any such specific result following; the alleged

causes are present without the alleged effects.

In order to attain anything like satisfactory results of the supposed

physical causes of leprosy in Great Britain in former times, the whole

question would require to be thoroughly investigated in connection with

two others, viz., the allied physical circumstances,—_firstly_, of the

inhabitants of those countries in which the disease in the same way

formerly raged; and, _secondly_, of those districts of the world in

which it is still prevalent. It is only by following such a line of

inquiry that we could hope, if at all, to separate mere matters of

opinion from matters of fact, and at last to obtain, by a kind of

reasoning by exclusion, the exact physical condition or conditions of a

people that are capable of originating or of spreading this particular

species of disease. The difficulty of the problem may be easily

appreciated by glancing for a moment at the diversified _geographical

localities_ and circumstances under which the tubercular leprosy is

known at the present day to appear. In modern times it has been found

existing, to a more or less limited extent, in places the most distant

and the most dissimilar in regard to temperature, climate, situation,

soil, etc., as in Sumatra,[295] under the equator, and in parts of

Iceland almost within the verge of the Arctic Circle;[296] in the

temperate regions of both hemispheres, as (in the southern) at Hamel en

Aarde[297] in the Cape district, and (in the northern) at Madeira[298]

and Morocco;[299] in the dry and arid plains of Arabia,[300] and in the

wet and malarious districts of Batavia[301] and Surinam;[302] along the

shores of Guiana,[303] and Sierra Leone,[304] and in the interior of

Africa,[305] Hindostan,[306] Asia Minor,[307] and Asiatic Russia;[308]

on the sea-coast, as at Carthagena,[309] and thousands of feet above

the level of the ocean, as on the table-land of Mexico;[310] on some of

the islands in the Indian,[311] Chinese,[312] Caribbean,[313] and

Mediterranean[314] seas, and on the continents of Asia, Africa, and

America.

CONTAGION AS A CAUSE OF LEPROSY.

Most modern pathologists seem inclined to call in question the

contagious nature of tubercular leprosy, as it at present exists in

different parts of the globe.

Cullen, Darwin, and Good are almost the only English physicians of later

times that have admitted the contagious character of the disease, and

that not from personal observation. The evidence bearing against the

doctrine of this mode of its diffusion is principally of a simply

negative kind. In some of the districts in which the malady is endemic,

the sick are seen to maintain a free intercourse with the healthy,

without the disease being frequently or at all communicated to the

latter; the nurses of the lazar hospitals are alleged to remain

uninfected; lepers often continue long in the midst of their families

without spreading the scourge to any of the other members; and

occasionally a husband and wife are seen living in wedlock for years,

one of them deeply affected by the disease, and the other remaining

perfectly sound. Instances, exceptional to these general remarks, are

certainly occasionally observed, as in a case quoted in a previous page

from Dr. Kinnis, of a wife becoming infected subsequently to both her

husband and daughter suffering from an attack of the malady. In such

cases as this, however, we must recollect that the repetition of the

disease in two or more members of the same family may merely depend upon

the same external or general morbific agencies, acting upon the

constitution of all the sufferers.

At least, whenever, from circumstances, this source of fallacy is

avoided, the evidence of the contagion of leprosy seems to become more

and more defective. Thus, when the disease happens to be imported in the

person of an infected individual from a district in which it is endemic,

to one in which it is unknown, the malady seems to have no tendency

whatever at the present day to spread to any of the inhabitants of the

new and healthy locality. Persons labouring under tubercular leprosy are

occasionally, for example, sent from southern stations to England and

France. In such not unfrequent cases the malady has never, I believe,

been known to be communicated, in one single instance, from the infected

person to those resident inhabitants of the new district, among whom he

was living in free and daily intercourse.[315]

Did the leprosy extend and prevail over Europe in the middle ages as

independently of propagation by contagion as the perpetuation of the

disease seems to be in most localities at the present day?

If we deferred to the mere opinion of the older medical and historical

authors, the contagious character of the disease at that era would

appear to be undoubted. These authors express an unanimous opinion on

its contagious propagation; and it is not till we come down to the

professional writers of the seventeenth century, as Fernelius[316] and

Forestus,[317] that we find this doctrine ventured to be called in

question.

The evidence, however, left us by the older authorities and physicians

on this point, is an evidence of opinion rather than of facts. They have

bequeathed to us merely their own dogmatic inferences, without

vouchsafing to state any of the individual data upon which their general

deductions were founded. As far, however, as we may judge by a few loose

fragments which we may still gather up from amid the imperfect and

scattered records of the disease, the European leprosy, if it were

contagious, when epidemic in the middle ages, was at least less so than

the combined medical and popular belief of those times would seem to

represent it. In the Edinburgh hospital in 1590, two of the lepers’

wives lived uninfected with their husbands; and a few of the English

leper hospitals, as those of Ripon, St. Magdalene, Exeter, and St.

Bartholomew, near Oxford, were endowed for the purpose of serving as

retreats at one and the same time both for the merely poor and the truly

leprous.

Individuals stricken with leprosy were sometimes looked upon by the

superstitious spirit of the age as persons directly smitten by the hand

of God; and we find in history traces of rich and noble, and even of

royal devotees, endeavouring to expiate their sins and propitiate the

good will of Heaven, by occasionally devoting themselves, and that with

perfect impunity, to such duties to the sick as offered the most certain

means of calling down the disease upon their own bodies, provided it had

been at all so contagious as was generally supposed. Saint Louis (Louis

IX.) of France visited the leper hospitals every third month, personally

rendered the most abject services to their inmates, fed them, and bathed

their sores with his own hands.[318] Henry III. of England is reported

to have annually, on Shrove Tuesday, engaged in the same duties.[319]

Robert II., the son of Hugh Capet, enacted the devotee in the same

manner, imprinting kisses with his lips on the hands of the lepers (_ore

proprio figens leprosorum manibus oscula, in omnibus Deum

collaudabat_).[320] The old English historian, Matthew Paris, relates,

in his usual quaint and gossiping style, an anecdote illustrative of a

similar degree of charitable penance and defiance of contagion being

practised by the Scottish Princess Matilda, the queen of Henry I. of

England. Speaking of some transactions in the year 1105, he observes—

“At the same time David (King of Scotland), the brother of Matilda,

Queen of the English, came to England to visit his sister, and when, on

a certain evening, he came by her invitation to her chamber, he found

the house filled with lepers (_domum invenit Leprosis plenam_), and the

Queen standing in the midst, having laid aside her cloak, she with both

hands girded herself with a towel, and water being placed in readiness,

she began to wash their feet, and wipe them with the towel, and

embracing them with both hands, kissed them with the utmost devotion.

Upon which her brother addressed her thus; ‘What is this which you are

doing, my Lady? in truth if the King knew this, he would never deign to

kiss with his lips your mouth, contaminated by the pollution of the

lepers’ feet!’ and she, smiling, replied, ‘Who knows not that the feet

of an Eternal King are to be preferred to the lips of an earthly king?

Behold it was for this that I invited you, dearest brother—that you

might learn by my example to perform similar actions. Do, I beseech you,

that which you see me doing.’ And when her brother had made answer that

he would by no means do such things, as she persevered in her employment

David with a smile withdrew.”[321]

In quoting, against the alleged strong contagion of the olden leprosy,

the preceding instances of complete exposure to the infection of the

disease, and yet, at the same time, of complete escape from it in some

well-known historical personages, let it not be inferred that the

victims of the malady were usually looked upon by the general community

with feelings of devotion and pious commiseration. On the contrary, the

subjects of this “_foedissimus omnium morborum_” were, as a body,

regarded alike by the church and by the people as objects of disgust.

The Council of Ancyrus decreed that lepers were only to be allowed to

worship amongst the Hyemantes, or those public penitents who, on account

of the enormity and turpitude of some of their sins, were obliged to

stand in the open air, and not even allowed to come under the porch of

the church.[322] The Council of Worms granted to lepers a liberty of

receiving the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, but not with

those in perfect health.[323] Guido de Monte Rocher, in his _Manual for

Curates_, states, that to some lepers the sacrament cannot be given,

because “non possunt corpus Dominicum sic recipere et tractare in ore

suo, quin rejicerent ipsum, sic multi, quibus reciderunt labia et dentes

et sunt totaliter corrosi usque ad guttur.”[324]

The preamble to the laws of the hospital of St. Julian’s, drawn up by

Abbot Michael, asserts, that “amongst all infirmities the disease of

leprosy may be considered the most loathsome, and those who are smitten

with it ought at all times, and in all places, and as well in their

conduct as in their dress, to bear themselves as more to be despised and

as more humble than all other men.” The canons of the Church of

Scotland, as drawn up in the thirteenth century, deal with the

unfortunate lepers more humanely than most other ecclesiastical

judicatories; for after recommending them to be admonished to respect

the churches of their districts, it is added that, if they cannot be

induced to do so, let no coercion be employed, seeing that affliction

should not be accumulated upon the afflicted, but rather their miseries

commiserated (_cum afflictis addi non debeat afflictio, sed ipsorum,

miseriis sit potius miserandum_.)[325] But the contempt displayed

towards them seems to have been almost proverbial as late as the age of

Elizabeth. Thus Shakespeare makes Margaret of Anjou exclaim to the

afflicted and suspicious Henry VI., after the murder of his uncle, the

Duke of Gloucester,

Why dost thou turn away and hide thy face?

I am no loathsome leper, look on me.[326]

Maundrell, one of our early English travellers in Palestine, alludes to

some cases of leprosy in terms portraying simply but strongly the

fearful effects and character of the disease. After speaking of some

cases of leprosy that he met with in his journey, he states (to quote

his own words), “At Sichem, near Naplous, there were not less than ten

lepers,—the same number that was cleansed by our Saviour not far from

the same place, that came a-begging to us at one time. Their manner is

to come with small buckets in their hands to receive the alms of the

charitable, their touch being still held infectious, or at least

unclean. Their whole distemper was so noisome that it might (he adds)

well pass for the utmost corruption of the human body on this side the

grave.”[327]

Various authors have alleged that the institution of leper hospitals,

and laws for the separation and seclusion of the infected, were formed

more from imitation of the Levitical institutions regarding the leprosy

than from direct observation and proofs of the contagious character of

the disease. The avoidance, however, and separation of the sick, have

been recommended and followed by authors and by communities over whom

the Levitical laws could have exercised no influence, direct or

indirect, and to whom, indeed, these laws were in all probability

totally unknown.

After describing the horrors and course of elephantiasis or tubercular

leprosy, the old Roman physician, Aretæus, adds, “seeing the infected

with this disease are such, who would not fly them? (_aufugiat_), or who

would not turn aside from a leper, even although he were a son, or a

father, or a brother, since there is fear lest the disease should be

communicated? (_quum metus est ne morbus communicaretur_). Hence,

many have banished those that were dearest to them into solitudes and

mountains.”[328]

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.

Lepers were compelled, by other reasons than mere custom or common law,

to retire from society. They were of necessity driven to seek the asylum

of the lazar hospitals, in consequence of the statutes, both of the

general country and of local communities, prohibiting any citizen from

retaining a person labouring under leprosy in his house, and preventing

the infected from entering within the gates of the towns and

villages.[337]

The old Scottish Burrow Lawes have stringent clauses upon this head,

for they hold that “na man should presume, or be so bauld as to harberie

or ludge ane lipperman within the burgh, under ane full amerciament.”

And further, “lippermen sall not enter within the towne, bot in passing

throw it, and sall not gang fra dure to dure, but sall sit at the ports

of the burgh, and sall seek almes fra them that passes in and comes

furth.”[338]

By the later general act of the Perth Parliament, the unfortunate beings

affected with the disease were again prohibited from entering towns

except for the purpose of purchasing victuals, and this they were only

allowed to do on three days of the week, the act strictly providing

that—

“_Item_, Na lipper folke, nouther man nor woman, enter nor cum in ane

Burgh of the Realme but thrise in the oulk (week) that is to saie,

Mondaie, Wednesdaie, and Fridaie, fra ten hours to twa after noone; and

quhair faires and mercattis fallis on thay dayis, that they leave their

entrie in the Burrowes, and gang on the morne to get their living.”[339]

Various towns and local judicatories in the country seem to have at

different times passed laws enforcing more strictly the observance of

exclusion of the infected from their own limits and districts. Some of

these local enactments have been preserved; and I shall quote such as I

have been able to discover, with a view to show the general fear

formerly entertained of the contagion of the disease, and the measures

that were adopted to prevent its communication.

Thus, in the statutes of the Society of Merchants or Guildry of

Berwick-upon-Tweed, said to have been drawn up by the mayor and others

in “the Zeare of God 1283-84,” it is strictly provided that “Na lipper

man sall enter within the portes of our burgh; and gif any by chance

enters within them, he sall be incontinent put forth be the sergant of

the burgh. And gif any lipper man uses commonlie contrair this our

discharge, to come within our burgh, his claithes wherewith he is cled

sall be taken from him and sall be brunt, and he being naked sall be

ejected furth of the burgh. Because it is provyded be the common

councill, that some gude man sall gather almes to them, that they may be

sustained in ane place competent for them without the burgh. And this is

to be understand of lipper folk, indwellers within the burgh, and not of

them quha dwells without the burgh.”[340]

Some of the smaller burghs and villages of these early times had their

individual rules and statutes upon the same point. The burgh of

Prestwick, Ayrshire, which contains at present, and probably never

contained more than about 1000 inhabitants, is situated about

half-a-mile north of the leper hospital of Kingcase. The old official

records and statutes of this small burgh, to which reference has

repeatedly been made in the preceding pages, have lately been printed

from the original MS. by Mr. Smith of Swinridgemuir. The earliest burgh

record that has thus been preserved is a collection of the laws of the

burgh, “Statuta Burgi de Prestwick maide by the haile consent of the

community of the same at the Cross of the same burgh, and to be keepit

and rafit unremittable and unrevocable.” The date of this collection, or

probably re-collection of the burgh laws, is 1470. The fourth of the

statutes fixed upon “for the common profit of the said burgh in time

coming for everlasting memorans” is to the following effect:—

“It is statut yat na man inhabitant ye said burghe or weman commoun or

intromet with ye sic folk (commune or intromit with the sick people) of

Kingcase, vnder ye pain of exiling ye said burghe when thai ar ourtane

(overtaken) be ane enquest yairupon, mair plainli yan ony oyder

persounis or persoun duelland in all ye land about.”—P. 15.

In the minuted records of the burgh, different cases occur of persons

accused in accordance with this statute. Thus, on December 1, 1477, Anne

Kerd and Andro Sauer are accused of repairing to Kingcase.[341] On the

26th April of the second following year, 1479, it was alleged with

regard to the said Andro Sauer, that he “repairis till Kingcase daily

and nigtly and his wif and his bairnis.”[342] This Anne Kerd seems to

have had the property of a burgess. At last, in November 1481, the same

rebellious Prestwickian, “Andro Sauer, is fund in daili reparand to

Kingcase, and yis the xxti court yerein, and is abill till infect ye

hale toune; and weris ye seik folkis clathis and bonnettis.”[343] After

this date no more mention is made in the records of Andro, who

repeatedly figures in them previously, for other more serious deeds than

that of repairing to Kingcase. I find, however, that others of his name,

and probably of his kindred, fall into the same error for which he

himself appears to have been banished. Thus, in 1496, Anne Sauer, Marion

Myllar, Ellane Browne, and Anne Duncane, “are ilkane severale in

amerciamentis for the selling of ale and intromettin of the folkis of

Kingcase again the statutis of the towne.”

Few or none of the very early records and laws of the magistrates of

Edinburgh have been preserved, but amidst some lately recovered, of a

date as late as 1530, we find the following statute anent the “Leper

Folke,”—“It is statut and ordanit be the Provost, Baillies, and

Counsell of this burghe that na manner of Lipper persone, man nor woman,

fra this tyme furth, cum amangis uther cleine personis, nor be nocht

fund in the kirk, fische merket, nor flesche merket, nor na other merket

within this burghe, under the pane of burnyng of their cheik and

bannasing off the toune.”[344]

Some of the old edicts and regulations made in regard to the diseased in

London have been preserved for us by Stow. According to the record of

Edward III., that king sent, in 1346, “a commandment under his Great

Seal, to the mayor and sheriffs of London, willing them to make

proclamation in every ward of the city and suburbs, that all leprous

persons within the said city and suburbs should avoid within fifteen

days, and that no man suffer any such leprous person to abide within his

house, upon pain to forfeit his said house, and to incur the king’s

further displeasure. And that they should cause the said lepers to be

removed into some out places of the Fields, from the haunt and company

of all sound people.”[345] From some of the city records it further

appears that the magistrates ordered “That the lepers walk not about the

streets, nor tarry there; that the keepers of the gates swear that they

will not permit lepers to enter into the city.” “There was at one time,”

adds Stow, “a brief for removing them from the city and suburbs. At

another time there was an edict for levying a hundred shillings out of a

tenement of the lepers, and delivering it to their officers for

sustaining them.”[346]

RESTRICTIONS PLACED UPON THE INMATES OF THE LEPER HOSPITALS.

The chance of contagion was provided against by other means besides the

mere separation of the infected from the community, and their banishment

to the lazar hospitals. In many instances the regulations and statutes

to which the lepers were subjected, as inmates of these hospitals, were

strongly restrictive, and framed with a view of preventing them from

spreading the disease to others by any dangerous degree of personal

communication with the healthy. The occasional severity of the

restrictions to which, with this view, the leper inhabitants of the

hospitals were subjected, affords us a curious example both of the great

dread in which the disease was held, and of the extent and stringency of

the measures of medical police which the local judicatories of this

country had in these times both the power and the will to exercise.

The rules of the Greenside Hospital, Edinburgh, present in themselves a

striking proof of this, and the occupants of the hospital were bound to

observe these rules under the penalty of death. “That this,” observes

Arnott, “might not be deemed an empty threatening, a gallows was erected

at the gavel of the hospital for the immediate execution of

offenders.”[347]

The persons placed in the Greenside Hospital in 1591 were five male

lepers with two of their wives—viz. (to quote the record) “Robert

Mardow, James Garvie, Johnn MacRere, James Wricht, and Johnn

Wilderspune, lepperis, togidder with Isobel Barcar, spous to the said

Robert Mardow, and Janet Galt, spous to the said James Garvie.” Among

other regulations enacted in regard to them, it was specially ordained,

“That nane of the said personis Lepperis, or their wyffes, depart or

resort fra the said hospitall to na oyder pairt, or place, bot sit still

thairat, and remayne thairin nicht and day, halyday and wark-day; and

that they resave na oyder maner of personis, oyder man or woman, within

the said place, bot sic as sall be placit with thame thairin, at command

of the said Counsall and Session; and that they keip the dure of the

said hospitall fast and clois, fra the dounpassing of the sone to the

rysing thairoff, under the payne of hanging.”

“That the said Jonet Galt only cum to the markatts for buying sic

viveris as is necessary to the saids personis, and presume to gang to na

oyder pairt nor place in her cuming and returning to and frae the said

markatts, under the payne aforesaid. Quhilk and other injunctions being

red to the personis foresaids, they agreit thairto, and promisit to obey

and underly the samyn, under the paynes therabove written. And

thairfore, for the better obedience thairof, and for terrefying the said

lepperis to transgress the samyn, the said commissioners has thocht

meitt and expedient that there be ane _gibbet_ sett up at the gavell of

the said hospital; and that the forme and order thairof be insert baith

in the buiks of Counsall and Sessioun of this burgh, _ad perpetuam rei

memoriam_.”[348]

The tenor of the regulations of the British leper hospitals was probably

in few or no other cases so extremely stringent as in the establishment

at Greenside. At least, if we may judge by the records of most of those

hospitals, the rules of which have been accidentally preserved, the

restrictions placed upon the inmates were confessedly great, but

certainly by no means so severe either in their degree or in the

punishment applied to them, as in those which we have just cited.

Besides, in most institutions, the prior, master, or warden of the

hospital, exercised a discretionary power in relation to the degree of

seclusion of the lepers of their establishment.

Thus, among the rules of the leper hospital of St. Magdalene, Exeter, it

was provided that “no brother or sister shall go or pass out of the

house beyond the bridge, without the gate of the said hospital, without

the license of the Warden or his deputy, upon pain to be put into the

stocks, and to have but bread and water for one day.”[349]

Again, among the many rules enacted by the Abbot Michaele for the

regulation of the hospital of St. Julian, in the neighbourhood of St.

Albans, I may select the following as characteristic illustrations of

the point which we are now considering:—

“Let no one presume to transgress the bounds fixed of old, (_metas ab

antiquo statutas_), of which one is placed in the south, another in the

north, as they still remain in view, except the custor of granges and

granaries, to whom the charge is committed to the master.

“Let no brother venture to enter the bake-house or brew-house in any

manner, with the exception of the brother to whom the charge is

assigned, who, when he enters, may not approach the bread and beer, in

touching or handling them in any way; since it is not meet that men of

such infirmity should handle those things which are appointed for the

common use of men.

“Let no one of the brothers attempt to go beyond the bounds of the

hospital, namely, in the direction of the king’s road, without his close

cape, in going to church or returning, nor stand or walk about in the

said street before or after service (nor, indeed, at any hour of the day

before or after dinner); but when divine service is finished, let them

enter their hospitals with all haste, unless any one wishes to remain in

the church, that he may have leisure for prayer and meditation. In like

manner, we command that there be no standing in the corridor, which

extends in length before the houses of the brothers in the direction of

the king’s road; and that no brother hold conversation there (_teneat

ibi parliamentum_) with another; but if any brother wish to hold

colloquy with another, let one go to the other in order, as he may wish,

through the said corridor, without standing by the way, unless some

stranger chance to meet him, with whom he may briefly speak and pass on.

But if an honest man and true come there, for the purpose of visiting an

infirm brother, let him have access to him, that they may mutually

discourse on that which is meet.”[350]

In considering under a previous head the extent of endowment of the

British leper hospitals, we have seen that the inmates of many of the

poorer institutions depended more or less entirely for their means of

subsistence upon the casual alms which they were able to beg from the

charitable. In a few favoured cases the lepers were specially authorised

to pursue this occupation beyond the district of the hospital. A charter

was given by King John to the lepers of St. Lawrence’s Hospital,

Bristol, granting them great privileges of this kind. Some of the

passages in this charter are curious, as illustrative of the present

point. I append a translation of a part of it from the copy of the

original document as published by Dugdale:—

“John, by the grace of God, King of England, etc., to the Archbishops,

etc., greeting, know ye that we, for the love of God, have granted, and

by this charter have confirmed to the lepers near Bristol, a croft

beyond the gate of Lacford, on the road to Bath, to dwell there, as the

charter which we gave them while we were Count Moreton reasonably

proves; know ye also that we have received these lepers into our

protection, and therefore desire and command that ye befriend and

protect them (_quod eos manu teneatis et protegatis_), and cause no

impediment to them, wherever they shall be asking alms in our lands, as

our letters-patent which we granted unto them when Count Moreton

rationally testifies,” etc.[351]

Grants and liberties, such as the above, were certainly, however, rare.

In general the lepers were restricted as to the districts and places in

which they presented themselves to seek for alms. We have already seen

the Burrow Lawes ordering that they “sall not gang fra dure to dure, but

sall sit at the ports of the burgh, and seek alms fra them that passes

in and furth;” and the Scottish Parliament of 1427 enacted that they

should not be allowed to sit and beg “neither in kirk nor in

kirk-yairdis,[352] nor other places within the burrowes, but at their

owne hospital, and at the part of the town and other places outwith the

burrowes.” But even in exercising this vocation in these stated places,

the unfortunate petitioners seem to have been everywhere obliged to use

certain precautions, with the view of prohibiting them from diffusing

the disease.

In Scotland, and in various other parts of Europe, they were obliged,

for this purpose, to use a “clapper” or rattle, in order that the noise

created by it might warn the healthy of the presence of an infected

fellow-mortal, whilst, at the same time, they carried a “cop” or

receiving dish, into which the charitable might drop their alms.[353]

Muratori tells us that in Italy the lepers made their presence known at

a great distance (_longe positos_) by the noise of a certain piece of

wood. Marmotrecti describes more minutely the instrument as composed of

wood, and formed of two or three tablets of it, which the leper struck

together when seeking bread (_quas concutit leprosus quaerendo

panem_).[354]

In the celebrated old Scoto-Saxon poem of Sir Tristrem, composed

probably about the middle of the thirteenth century,[355] and valuable

(to use the words of an acute critic)[356] “for its pictures of ancient

manners” and the customs “of Scotland in the days of Alexander III.,”

the hero of the romance is, at one stage of his adventures in Cornwall,

represented as assuming for disguise and concealment the appearance of a

leper or mesel.[357] In this character the poet provides him with the

usual cop and clapper (stanza 80, p. 181).

Ganhardin gan fare,

Into Bretaine away;

And Tristrem duelled thare,

To wite what men wald say;

Coppe and Claper he bare,

Til the fiften day,

As he a mesel ware:

Under walles he lay,

To lithe.

We have already, in the Second Part of the present paper, seen

Henryson, in the sixteenth century, describing his leper heroine as

arrayed

With cop and clapper like ane Lazarous.

And from the advice proffered by the other lepers to the weeping

Cresseid after she is actually removed to the lazar-house, the

importance and frequent use of the clapper is sufficiently shown—

I counsall thee mak vertew of ane neid,

To leir to clap thy clapper to and fro,

And leir efter the law of lipper leid.[358]

Into some towns the lepers seem to have been allowed the liberty of

entry, provided they used their clappers, to advertise the passing

inhabitants of their presence, and thus allowed them to shun the

supposed danger of their contact. The magistrates of Glasgow made the

carrying of clappers one of the conditions on which they admitted the

occasional entrance of the inmates of the Brigend hospital into their

city, one of their edicts for October 1610 running thus:—“It is statut

and ordanit that the Lipper of the hospital sall gang (walk) only on the

calsie (street) syde near the gutter, and sall haif clapperis and ane

claith upoun their mouth and face, and sall stand afar of quhill they

resaif almous, or answer under the payne of banischeing them from the

toun and hospital.”

One of the statutes of the Greenside hospital, Edinburgh, was to the

effect—

“That nane of the lepperis cry or ask for alms, utherways then be thair

clapper; and that every ane of thame, his day about, sitt at the dore of

the said hospitall to that effect, the rest allwayes remaining within

the samyn, and that thay distribute equallie amongs thame quhatsoever

money they purches be thair said begging, and gif the just declaration

thairof to the visitour appoynted everie Setterday, under sic payne as

the counsill shall injoyne unto thame.”

LEPERS REGARDED AS DEAD PERSONS BY THE CIVIL LAW.

According to the tenor of various old civil codes and local enactments,

when a person became affected with leprosy he was looked upon as legally

and politically dead, and lost the privileges belonging to his right of

citizenship.

By the law of England lepers were classed with idiots, madmen, outlaws,

etc., as incapable of being heirs; and a leper removed by a writ _de

leproso amovendo_ could not be a guardian in socage.[359]

Rotharis, king of Lombardy, as early as the eleventh century, decreed

that when any one became affected with leprosy, and the fact was known

to the judge or people, so that the leper was expelled from society and

dwelt in seclusion, he had no power to alienate his effects or dispose

of them to any one (_non sit illi licentia res suas alienare aut

thingare cuilibet personæ_). For, it is added, from the very day on

which he is expelled from his home, he is to be regarded as dead

(_tanquam mortuus habetur_).[360] The same was the law of Normandy,

according to Dufresne[361] and Delamarré;[362] and Lobineau, in his

history of Brittany,[363] speaks of it being formerly in accordance with

the rituals of various churches.

The leper was not looked upon in the eye of the law alone as defunct,

for the Church also took the same view, and performed the solemn

ceremonials of the burial of the dead over him on the day on which he

was separated from his fellow-creatures and consigned to a lazar-house.

He was from that moment regarded as a man dead amongst the living, and

legally buried, though still breathing and alive. The ritual of the

French church retained till a late period the various forms and

ceremonies to which the leper was subjected on this day of his living

funeral. Ogée[364] and Pluquet[365] have both described them.

A priest robed with surplice and stole went with the cross to the house

of the doomed leper. The minister of the church began the necessary

ceremonies by exhorting him to suffer, with a patient and penitent

spirit, the incurable plague with which God had stricken him. He then

sprinkled the unfortunate leper with holy water, and afterwards

conducted him to the church, the usual burial verses being sung during

their march thither. In the church the ordinary habiliments of the leper

were removed; he was clothed in a funeral pall; and while placed before

the altar between two trestles, the _Libera_ was sung, and the mass for

the dead celebrated over him. After this service he was again sprinkled

with holy water, and led from the church to the house or hospital

destined for his future abode. A pair of clappers, a barell, a stick,

cowl, and dress, etc. etc., were given to him. Before leaving the leper,

the priest solemnly interdicted him from appearing in public without his

leper’s garb—from entering inns, churches, mills, and bake-houses—from

touching children, or giving them ought he had touched—from washing his

hands or anything pertaining to him in the common fountains and

streams—from touching in the markets the goods he wished to buy with

anything except his stick—from eating or drinking with any others than

lepers;—and he specially forbade him from walking in narrow paths, or

from answering those who spoke to him in the roads and streets, unless

in a whisper, that they might not be annoyed with his pestilent breath

and with the infectious odour which exhaled from his body;—and last of

all, before taking his departure, and leaving the leper for ever to the

seclusion of the lazar-house, the official of the church terminated the

ceremony of his separation from his living fellow-creatures by throwing

upon the body of the poor outcast a shovelful of earth, in imitation of

the closure of the grave.

LIST OF LEPER HOSPITALS IN GREAT BRITAIN.

In Part I. I enumerated specially the different Scottish leper hospitals

with which I was acquainted, and referred in general terms to the number

of similar institutions that had existed in England. Under the idea that

a connected view of all the British leper hospitals might prove

interesting, I have drawn out the following alphabetical list of such of

them as have come to my knowledge in the course of the preceding

inquiries. To the locality of each hospital and its special designation,

or rather dedication, I have added the dates, as nearly as they could be

ascertained, either of its original foundation, or of the first notice

of it to be found in historical records. Among the unarranged mass of

materials contained in the _Notitia Monastica_, and in the _Monasticon

Anglicanum_, (to which works I am principally indebted for the notes of

the English leper houses), references exist to many old hospitals, the

individual objects of which are now utterly forgotten and unknown. If

sufficient records of them had been preserved we would probably have

been enabled to increase to a much greater extent the subjoined list of

institutions for lepers, as many of them, there is little doubt, were

set aside (like those we now enumerate) for the reception of the victims

of that disease, whose olden history, in as far as relates to this

country, we have so hastily and imperfectly attempted to trace.

LIST OF LEPER HOSPITALS FORMERLY EXISTING IN GREAT BRITAIN.

+-----------------------------+-------------------------+-------------------+

| Town and County. |Designation of Hospital |Date of Foundation |

| | or Locality. |or Earliest Notice.|

+-----------------------------+-------------------------+-------------------+

|Aberdeen |St. Anna. | |

|Aldcambus, Berwickshire | ... |Before A.D. 1214. |

|Aldnestun, Berwickshire | ... |Before 1177. |

|Appleby, Westmoreland |St. Nicolas. | |

|Athelington, Dorsetshire |St. Mary Magdalene. | |

|Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire |St. John and St. Leonard |Time of Henry I. |

| | | or before 1135. |

|Banbury, Oxfordshire |St. John |Time of King John, |

| | | or before 1216. |

|Beccles, Suffolk |St. Mary Magdalene |About 1327. |

|Berkhamstede, Hertfordshire |St. John the Evangelist. | |

|Berwick-upon-Tweed | ... |Before 1283. |

|Blythe, Nottinghamshire |St. John the Evangelist |In time of Pope |

| | | Honorius. |

|Bolton, Northumberland |Holy Trinity |Before 1225. |

|Bristol, Somersetshire |St. Mary Magdalene. | |

|Bristol, Somersetshire |St. Lawrence |Before 1135. |

|Brookstreet, near |St. John |Before 1292. |

| Brentwood in the parish | | |

| of Southweald, Essex | | |

|Burton, Leicestershire |Blessed Virgin and St. |Time of King |

| | Lazarus; Burton Lazars | Stephen. |

|Bury St. Edmund’s, Suffolk |St. Peter |About 1327. |

|Colchester, Essex |St. Mary Magdalene. | |

|Cambridge |“Hospital of Lazars” |Before 1397. |

|Canterbury, Kent |St. Nicholas | |

|Chatham, Kent |St. Bartholomew |In time of William |

| | | II. or before |

| | | 1100. |

|Chichester, Sussex |St. James and St. Mary |Before 1199. |

| | Magdalene | |

|Chesterfield, Derbyshire |St. Leonard |Before 1208. |

|Crowmersh, Oxfordshire | ... |About 1248. |

|Dartford, Kent |Trinity. | |

|Dartford, Kent |St. Mary Magdalene |About 1330. |

|Devizes, Wiltshire | ... |Before 1207. |

|Doncaster, Yorkshire |St. James |Time of Henry III. |

| | | or before 1272. |

|Dunwich, Suffolk |St. James |Before 1199. |

|Edinburgh |Greenside |In 1591, but |

| | | probably a |

| | | previous |

| | | hospital. |

|Exeter, Devonshire |St. Mary Magdalene |Before 1163. |

|Eye, Suffolk |St. Mary Magdalene |About 1330. |

|Glasgow, Lanarkshire |St. Ninian |In 1350. |

|Gloucester |St. Margaret |Before 1320. |

|Goreleston, Suffolk | ... |Mentioned in 1372. |

|Hardwick, Norfolk |St. Lawrence |Time of Edward II. |

| | | or before 1327. |

|Hedon, Yorkshire |St. Sepulchre |Before 1216. |

|Hereford |St. Giles. | |

|Herting, Sussex |St. John the Baptist |Before 1199. |

|Hexham, Northumberland | ... |About 1210. |

|Hithe, Kent |St. Andrew |Before 1336. |

|Huntingdon |St. Margaret |Time of Malcolm |

| | | IV. of Scotland, |

| | | who died 1165. |

|Ipswich, Suffolk |St. Mary Magdalene | |

|Ipswich, Suffolk |St. James. | |

|Kingcase, Ayrshire |St. Ninian |Before time of |

| | | Robert Bruce? |

|Kirkby, Westmoreland |St. Leonard. | |

|Lancaster, Lancashire |St. Leonard |About 1190. |

|Langwade, Norfolk. | | |

|Langport, Somersetshire |St. Mary Magdalene |About 1310. |

|Lerwick, Shetland. | | |

|Leicester |St. Leonard. | |

|Linlithgow |St. Magdalene |Before time of |

| | | Alexander II. |

|Little Maldon, Essex |St. Giles. | |

|Lincoln |Holy Innocents. | |

|London and vicinity |St. Giles |In 1101. |

| ” ” |Highgate |In 1472. |

| ” ” |Between Milesend and | |

| | Stratford Bow. | |

| ” ” |At Kingsland. | |

| ” ” |At Shoreditch. | |

| ” ” |Lock, Kent Street, | |

| | without Southwark. | |

| ” ” |St. James, Westminster |Very early. |

|Long Blandford, Dorsetshire | | |

|Lowcrosse, Yorkshire |St. Leonard. | |

|Lynne, Dorsetshire |St. Mary Magdalene |Before 1336. |

|Lynne, Norfolk |St. Mary Magdalene |In 1145. |

| ” ” |St. John. | |

| ” ” |West Lynne. | |

| ” ” |Cowgate. | |

| ” ” |Setch Hithe. | |

|Mayden Bradley, Wiltshire |Virgin Mary |Before 1135. |

|Norwich, Norfolk |St. Mary Magdalene |Before 1119. |

| ” ” |St. Mary. | |

| ” ” |Without St. Magdalene’s | |

| | Gate. | |

| ” ” |Without St. Bennet’s | |

| | Gate. | |

| ” ” |Without St. Giles’ Gate. | |

| ” ” |Without St. Stephen’s | |

| | Gate. | |

|Northampton |St. Leonard |In 11th century. |

|Otteford, Kent | ... |Time of Henry III. |

| | | or before 1272. |

|Otley, Yorkshire | ... |Time of Edward II. |

| | | or before 1327. |

|Oxford |St. Bartholomew. | |

|Papastour, Shetland. | | |

|Peterborough, |St. Leonard |Before 1154. |

| Northamptonshire | | |

|Pilton, Devonshire |St. Margaret |Before 1197. |

|Plymouth, Devonshire |St. Mary Magdalene. | |

|Plympton, Devonshire. | | |

|Pontefract, Yorkshire |St. Mary Magdalene. | |

|Racheness in Southacre, |St. Bartholomew |Before 1216. |

| Norfolk | | |

|Ripon, Yorkshire |St. Mary Magdalene |Beginning of 12th |

| | | century. |

|Rochester, Kent |St. Katherine | About 1316. |

|Romendale or Rumney in |St. Stephen and St. |Time of Baldwin, |

| Kent | Thomas | Archbishop of |

|Rothfan, Banffshire | ... |Before 1249. |

|Selwood, Somersetshire | ... |About 1212. |

|Sherburn, Durham |The Virgin, Lazarus |Before 1181. |

|Shrewsbury, Kent |St. Giles |Before 1189. |

|Southampton, Hampshire |St. Mary Magdalene. | |

|St. Alban’s, Hertfordshire |St. Julian |Between 1100 and |

| | | 1135. |

|Stamford, Lincolnshire. | | |

|Sturbridge, Cambridgeshire |St. Mary Magdalene |Very early. |

|Tannington, Kent |St. James |Before 1189. |

|Taunton, Somersetshire. | | |

|Tavistock, Devonshire |St. Mary Magdalene. | |

|Tenby, Pembrokeshire |St. Mary Magdalene. | |

|Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire | | |

|Thetford, Norfolk |St. John |Time of Edward I. |

| ” ” |St. Margaret |About 1390. |

|Towcester, Northhamptonshire |St. Leonard |About 1200. |

|Walsingham, Norfolk | | |

|Warwick |St. Michael |Time of Henry I. |

| | | or Stephen. |

|Wycomb, Buckinghamshire |St. Margaret and St. | |

| | Giles. | |

|Yarmouth, Norfolk |Outside North Gate |Before 1314. |

|York, Yorkshire |St. Nicholas |About 1110. |

+-----------------------------+-------------------------+-------------------+

APPENDIX.

ADDITIONAL NOTES BY JOSEPH ROBERTSON, LL.D.

LEPER HOSPITAL OF GLASGOW.

Sir James Simpson’s Paper, Part I. p. 10.—“In 1350, in the reign of

David II., the Lady of Lochow, daughter of Robert, Duke of Albany,

erected a leper hospital at the Gorbals of Glasgow, near the old

bridge.—(Gibson’s _Hist. of Glasg._ p. 52; Cleland’s _Glasg._ vol. i.

p. 68.)”

There is some mistake here. If the leper hospital was founded by the

Lady of Lochow, daughter of the Duke of Albany, it must have been a

hundred years after 1350. The dukedom of Albany was not created until

1378, and the first daughter of that house who married a Knight of

Lochow was Marjory, the wife of Sir Duncan Campbell, who died in 1453.

The earliest record notice of the hospital which I have observed is in

1494, when William Steward, prebendary of Killern and rector of

Glassfurd, endowed a chaplain to serve in the chapel of St. Ninian,

which he had lately built, “_ad Hospitale Leprosorum degentium prope

Pontem Glasguensem_.” He provided that yearly, on the anniversary of his

death, twenty-four poor scholars should assemble in the chapel of the

hospital to perform certain services, for which one penny was to be paid

to each of them, along with one shilling to the lepers—“et leprosis non

sociatis degentibus in dicto Hospitali xijd.” The lepers were to ring

the chapel bell for the _Salve Regina_ every night, and to pray in the

chapel for their benefactors.—(_Regist. Episcopal. Glasg._, vol. ii.

pp. 488-490. Edinb. 1843, Mait. Club.) In 1505 we have “pauperibus

leprosis in Leprosario Sancti Niniani trans pontem Glasguensem

degentibus.”—(_Liber Collegii Nostre Domine Glasguensis_, p. 259.

Glasg. 1846, Maitland Club.) In 1528, James Houston, sub-dean of

Glasgow, founder of the Lady College (now the Tron Kirk) of Glasgow,

ordered twelve pennies to be distributed yearly, on the anniversary of

his death, to the lepers beside the Bridge of Glasgow, and others, who

should appear in the churchyard of the Lady College to say orisons for

his soul—“_leprosis extraneis et commorantibus juxta Pontem Glasguensem

comparentibus in cimiterio prefecto Ecclesie Collegiate oraturis

Deum_.”—(_Lib. Coll. Nostre Domine Glasguensis_, p. 51.) The Tron Kirk

or Ladye College was on the north side of the Clyde, and within the

burgh of Glasgow, so that we have here proof that lepers in 1528 were

not forbidden to enter the burgh. Contrast this feeling towards them

with the feeling shown in the Leges Burgorum and Statuta Gilde of the

twelfth and thirteenth centuries, printed in the _Acta Parliamentorum

Scotiæ_, vol. i., and with the banishment of all lepers from Glasgow in

1593 and 1594, as instructed by the Kirk-Session Records, abridged in

Wodrow’s _Biograph. Collect._, vol. ii. part ii. p. 41.

Did this difference of toleration arise from some corresponding

difference in the intensity or general diffusion of the disease?

LEPER HOSPITAL AT STIRLING.

The existence of a leper-house at Stirling is proved by entries in the

Rotuli Scaccarii Regum Scotorum, MS. in the General Register House.

1463-4. “Et leprosis prope burgum de Striuelin ex elimosina Domini

Regis percepientibus annuatim octo bollas farine—viij bolle

farine.”

Rot. Scacc., No. 251.

1466-7. “Et leprosis prope burgum de Striuelin ex elemosina Regis de

anno compoti—viij bolle farine.”

Rot. Scacc., No. 257.

1473-4. “Et leprosis prope burgum de Striuelyne ex elemosina Regis—iiij

celdre farine.”

Rot. Scacc., No. 266.

1497-9. “Et leprosis ad finem orientalem burgi de Striuelin

percepientibus annuatim octo bollas ex elemosina Regis de

dictis annis [7 Jul. 1497-10 Jul. 1499]—iiij celdre farrine

auenatice.”

Rot. Scacc., No. 314.

1499-1501. “Et leprosis ad finem orientalem burgi de

Striuelin—j celdra farrine auenatice.”

Rot. Scacc., No. 319.

1504-5. “Et leprosis de Striuelin in elimosina viij bolle

ordei—viij bolle farrine.”

Rot. Scacc., No. 329.

1505-6. “Allocatur compotanti in elimosina leprosis ad finem

burgi de Striuelin de termino compoti—viij bolle farrine

[auenatice].”

Rot. Scacc., No. 331.

1506-7. “In elimosina leprosis ad finem burgi de

Striueling—viij bolle farrine.”

Rot. Scacc., No. 333.

1511-12. “Et leprosis prope finem ville de Striueling in

elemosina de anno compoti—viij bolle ordei.”

Rot. Scacc., No. 347.

Observe how literally the situation of the leper-house, as described in

the language of record “_ad finem burgi_,” answers to Henryson’s

phrase—“yone hospitall _at the tounis end_.”

LEPER HOSPITAL OF ABERDEEN.

The leper hospital of Aberdeen was in existence before 1363. A charter

of that year describes certain lands as bounded by the king’s highway

leading from the burgh of Aberdeen _versus domos Leprosorum_; and again

_a domibus dictorum Leprosorum_.—(_Registrum Episcopatus Aberdonensis_,

vol. ii. p. 283.)

The use of the plural _domos_ and _domibus_ may possibly denote that

there were two hospitals, as at Canterbury and elsewhere—one for men

and one for women.

The Regent and the Privy Council interposed for the repair or

restoration of the leper hospital of Aberdeen in 1574; in 1578 it was

placed under the charge of a master; and in 1591 there were patients in

it.—(_Selections from Ecclesiastical Records of Aberdeen_, pp. 20, 23.

Aberd. 1846, Spald. Club.—_Extracts from the Burgh Records of

Aberdeen_, 1570-1625, pp. 70, 71. Aberd. 1848, Spald. Club. _Book of Bon

Accord_, p. 342.) There would seem to have been an outbreak of leprosy

in Scotland about this time. It was in 1584 that the Magistrates of

Edinburgh issued orders for finding a commodious place for a

leper-house; in 1589 a leper-house was ordered to be built; and in 1591

there were five patients in it. (Sir James Simpson’s Paper, Part I. p.

11.) So also in Glasgow, in 1586 the Kirk-Session of Glasgow gave orders

that “the Lepper Folk’s House or Spittal beyond the Bridge” should be

visited, “to see how the same should be reformed.” These orders were

renewed in 1587; in 1588 “the yard of the Lepper House” was built; and

in 1589 six lepers are found in the Hospital. (Wodrow’s _Biographical

Collections_, vol. ii. part ii. pp. 40, 41. Sir James Simpson’s Paper,

Part I. p. 10.) In 1593, “the Lepper House [of Glasgow] was charged to

receive none but townsfolks, and all Leppers were banished the town;”

and in 1594 the Kirk-Session “beseeches the magistrates to put all

Leppers out of toun, for fear of infection.”—(Wodrow’s _Biographical

Collections_, vol. ii. part ii. pp. 40, 41.)

If there were really a new access of leprosy in Scotland about

1580-1590, the disease seems speedily to have abated, at least in

Aberdeen. In 1604, when a female leper applied for admission, “the Keys

of the Hospital” were given to her, showing that the place was then

empty and locked up.—(_Selections from the Ecclesiastical Records of

Aberdeen_, p. 34.) In May 1610 it was ordered that two merks should be

given by the Kirk-Session “to the Lepper woman laitlie put in the Lepper

Hous, becaus she will not gett any of the rent of the said Hous till

Martenes next;” denoting, apparently, that there was but one leper in

the hospital at this time.—(_Selections from the Ecclesiastical Records

of Aberdeen_, pp. 73, 74.) In 1612, a female leper, “being expellit

furth of this toun, as ane not meit to dwell within the same,” is

allowed to take up her abode in the leper-house, although “sche be not

borne and bred within this burght.”—(_Extracts from the Burgh Records

of Aberdeen_, vol. ii. (1570-1625), p. 308.) I do not observe record of

any later patient. Fifty years afterwards, in 1661, both the leper

hospital and its chapel (erected in 1519) were ruined if not razed to

the ground, “and scarcelie is the name knowne to many.”—(Gordon’s

_Description of Bothe Touns of Aberdeene_, pp. 18, 19. Aberd. 1842,

Spald. Club.)

Mr. Albert Way, in the _Promptorium Parvulorum_, p. 298,

says—“Heutzner, who visited England during the reign of Elizabeth,

speaks of the English as very subject to the disease of leprosy.” I have

not Heutzner’s book at hand, but it might be looked at to see if he

speaks of leprosy being prevalent in England so late as the reign of

Queen Elizabeth.

LEPER HOUSE OF RATHVEN.

The date of the first charter now extant of the leper-house at Rothfan

(now Rathven) in the Enzie, was between the years 1224 and 1226, as can

be shown from the list of witnesses who attest it. It may be remarked

that the founder, John Bisset, is believed to have been a kinsman of

that Manaser Bisset, sewer to King Henry II. of England, who founded the

leper hospital of Mayden Bradley in Wilts, and whose wife Alice, an

heiress, is said to have been herself a leper.—(_Monasticon

Anglicanum_, vol. vi. part ii. p. 643, edit. ult.)

The hospital of Rathven still exists, but has long ceased to be occupied

by lepers. Its tenants, in 1563, were simply “beidmen,” and their number

had been reduced from seven to six. They had 42 marks for their ordinary

charges, and £7 : 4s. for their habits. At the end of the last century

every bedeman had half-an-acre of land for life, one boll of oatmeal

yearly, and 9s. 6d. also yearly. At that time none of the bedemen lived

in the hospital. But it was repaired not many years ago, and when the

_New Statistical Account of Scotland_ was published, two of the six

bedemen resided in the hospital. It stands in the village of Rathven, in

the district of the Enzie, and the shire of Banff.—(_Antiquities of the

Shires of Aberdeen and Banff_, vol. ii. pp. 142-145. Aberd. 1847, Spald.

Club.)

THE KNIGHTS OF ST. LAZARUS IN SCOTLAND.

In 1296, Friar William Corbet, master of the house of St. Lazarus of

Harop (Frater Willelmus Corbet, magister domus Sancti Lazari de Harop),

had letters for the restitution of his lands, directed to the Sheriff of

Edinburgh (a sheriffdom which then included both Haddingtonshire and

Linlithgowshire), from King Edward I. of England, as overlord of

Scotland.—(_Rotuli Scotiæ_, vol. i. p. 25. London, 1814.)

In 1376, King Robert II. granted a charter to his eldest son, John, Earl

of Carrick, Steward of Scotland, of the lands of Prestisfelde, St.

Giles’ Grange, and Spetelton, in the sheriffdom of Edinburgh, then in

the King’s possession by reason of the forfeiture of the Friars of

Harehope, abiding at the faith and peace of the King and kingdom of

England, contrary to the faith and peace of the King and kingdom of the

Scots, (racione forisfacture Fratrum de Harehope ad fidem et pacem Regis

et regni Anglie, ac contra fidem et pacem nostras existencium). The

grant was to lapse when the Friars of Harehope became reconciled to the

faith and peace of the King and kingdom of the Scots.—(_Registrum Magni

Sigilli Regum Scotorum_, p. 132. Edin. 1814.)

These notices do not enable us to fix the position of Harop or Harehope,

showing only that it had lands near Edinburgh. The only other notice of

the house which I have observed rather perplexes the question than

otherwise. It occurs in the history of the deprivation of English

priests of their Scotch benefices, given by Fordun (_Scotichronicon_,

lib. xi. cap. xxi.), and, with some variations, in a memorial of a

Scotch monk claiming the Priory of Coldingham, about 1422, printed in

the _Priory of Coldingham_, pp. 246-258. Lond. 1841, Surtees Soc. It is

here said that Harehope, or Holme, was founded by King David, the son of

St. Margaret; that certain lands in Lothian were annexed to it, in the

neighbourhood of Edinburgh, namely Spitalton and St. Giles’ Grange; that

the monks (_monachi_) and laymen of the house, being Englishmen,

conspired against the realm of Scotland; that King David therefore

declared their lands forfeited, and bestowed them on Walter of Wardlaw,

Bishop of Glasgow, for his life; that after Bishop Wardlaw’s death the

lands were given to his kinsman the Laird of Ricarton, by whose heirs

they were possessed at the time this record was written. The memorial

printed in the _Priory of Coldingham_ expressly quotes the Ricarton

charters—“Ut patet in cartis dicti domini de Ricarton exinde

confectis.” If these be still extant, they may remove the doubts which

meanwhile may attach to the question whether the “Harehope or Holme” of

Fordun and the Scotch Prior of Coldingham be certainly the same with the

“Harehop” of the _Rotuli Scotiæ_ in 1296, and the charter of King Robert

II. in 1376. The possessors of the latter are described as Friars

(_fratres_), of the former as monks (_monachi_)—an all-important

distinction in that age, and not at all likely to be overlooked. Then,

again, Fordun and the Scotch Prior of Coldingham say nothing of the

grant of the possessions of Harehope to the Earl of Carrick,—if,

indeed, they do not relate grants of these possessions incompatible with

the charter of King Robert II. in 1376. On the other hand, we have, both

in that charter and the notices of Fordun and the Scotch Prior of

Coldingham, mention of the same lands of Spitaltoun and St. Giles’

Grange as the possessions of Harehope.

The Spitaltoun here referred to may perhaps be identified with the

“Spittle toun” of Upper Liberton, near Edinburgh. At the same time there

is a Spitaltoun in the lands of Warristoun, near Ricarton.

In Spottiswood’s _Account of the Religious Houses in Scotland_, it is

said that the hospital of St. Mary Magdalene, near Linlithgow, “was

formerly governed by the Lazarites.”—(Bp. Keith’s _Catal. of Scotch

Bishops_, p. 477, edit. 1824.) It is added that the hospital at Lanark

“belonged likewise to this sect.” It does not necessarily follow from

the words of the charter in the _Registrum de Neubotle_ (p. 149) that

the Friars of St. Lazarus, there spoken of, had their Hospital in

Linlithgow. The words are,—“Unam particam terre cum crofto de quarta

parte illius tofti quod tenui de Fratribus de Sancto Lazaro in villa de

Lynlitgu in burgagis scilicet illum particum terre que iacet ex

orientali parte illius tofti.” The object here seems to be rather to

indicate the position of the piece of land as being in Linlithgow than

to describe the Friars of St. Lazarus as being located there.

ENDOWMENTS OF SCOTCH LEPER HOSPITALS, Part I. p. 31.

_Glasgow._—In 1593 the rental of the leper-house of Glasgow was £7 :

15s. in money, and 18 bolls of meal.—Wodrow’s _Biographical

Collections_, vol. ii. part ii. p. 40; Glasg. 1848, Mait. Club.

_Rothfan or Rathven._—In 1563 the money rent of the hospital of Rathven

seems to have been £35 : 4s. In 1798 the hospital had 3 acres of land, 6

bolls of oatmeal, and £3 : 15s. of money rent.—_Antiquities of the

Shires of Aberdeen and Banff_, vol. ii. pp. 143-145; Aberd. 1847, Spald.

Club.

NUMBER OF INMATES IN LEPER HOSPITALS.

A passage in the will of “old John of Gaunt, time-honour’d Lancaster,”

in 1398, seems to support the opinion expressed at p. 18, that the leper

hospitals in general did not contain many patients.—“Item, jeo devise a

chescun maison de lepres deinz v. lieues entour Londres charges de v.

malades, v. nobles en l’onur des v. plaies principalx de Nostre

Seigneur, et a ceux qi sont meyns charges, trois nobles en l’onur de la

Benoit Trinite.”—(_Testamenta Eboracensia_, vol. i. p. 227; Lond. 1836.

Surtees Soc.)

DATES OF THE APPEARANCE OF LEPROSY IN GREAT BRITAIN.

_Ireland._—Ireland is excluded from consideration, else proof of the

existence of leprosy in that island in the end of the seventh century

might be adduced. St. Finan, a native of Munster, who died between 675

and 695, “was surnamed Lobhar, or the Leper, from his having been

afflicted for thirty years of his life with some cutaneous

disorder.”—(Dr. Lanigan’s _Ecclesiastical History of Ireland_, vol.

iii. pp. 83-88; Dublin, 1822.)

_England._—As to England, says Mr. Albert Way, “it has been affirmed

that leprosy was brought into Europe by the Crusaders; in the

Anglo-Saxon vocabulary, however, which has been attributed to Aelfric,

occurs the word ‘LEPROSUS = hreofliz, oððe, licðrowera,’ Jul. A, II. f.

123.”—(_Promptorium Parvulorum_, vol. i. p. 297; Lond. 1843. Camden

Soc.)

To the instances given by Sir James Simpson, Part I., p. 39, of the

occurrence of leprosy in England before the first Crusade, may be added

the case of a noble Englishman of the south of England—_nobili viro sed

leproso_—miraculously cured at the tomb of St. Cuthbert at Durham, as

related by Reginald of Durham from the recital of a fellow-monk,

Turold—“qui se hæc audisse a veteranis canonicis asseruit, in quorum

presentia et aspectu hoc gestum fuit.” The canons here spoken of were

ejected from Durham in 1083—thirteen years before the first Crusade.

Reginald of Durham wrote before 1195. He speaks of the disease

thus:—“Accidit ut lepræ morbum passim eam enutriendo incurreret, ita

ut, modico interposito tempore, tota vultus illius superficies

horribilis videntibus appareret. Suis etiam quandoque, sanie ulcerum

difluente, factus est evitabilis; et in consortii communione nonnullis

effectus intolerabilis.” Yet, when he journeyed from the south of

England to the tomb of St. Cuthbert he was “nobilibus juvenum

ministrantium, amicorum et parentum, constipatus

agminibus.”—(_Reginaldi Dunelmensis Libbellus de Beati Cuthberti

Virtutibus_, cap. xix. pp. 37-41; Lond. 1835. Surtees Soc.)

The disease was probably not unknown among the Anglo-Saxons, yet the

silence of their laws (the word Leper is not to be found in the index to

Thorpe’s Collection) with regard to it, contrasts strongly with the

frequent enactments for its prevention in the twelfth and thirteenth

centuries both in England and Scotland, and (if we allow the Welsh laws

the antiquity which is claimed for them) in the tenth and eleventh

centuries in Wales. May not the anomaly be explained by supposing that

the disease broke out with new severity about the beginning of the

twelfth century?

_Scotland._—No trace of leprosy is to be found in Adamnan’s Life of St.

Columba, written in the seventh century. But of one of St. Columba’s

contemporaries—St. Kentigern of Glasgow, who died about 600—it is

related that in that city he cleansed lepers—“mundabat leprosos.” These

are the words of his biographer, Joceline of Furnes, who wrote towards

the end of the twelfth century.—(_Vit. S. Kentigerni_, cap. xxxiv.;

Pinkert. _Vit. Antiq. Sanct. Scotiæ_, p. 270.) The same biographer

relates that at St. Kentigern’s tomb in Glasgow lepers were

cured—“leprosis cutis munditia restituitur.”—(_Vit. S. Kentigerni_,

cap. xliv.; Pinkert. _Vit. Antiq. SS. Scot._, p. 295.)

So also it is related of St. Boniface of Rosemarky, who appears to have

flourished in the beginning of the eighth century, that he cleansed

lepers—“leprosos mundabat.” These are the words of the Breviary of

Aberdeen (Proprium Sanctorum pro tempore hyemali, fol. lxx.), printed in

1510, but quoting and using older materials.

St. Aelred of Rievaux, who died in 1166, relates that lepers were

cleansed at the tomb of St. Ninian at Whithern in Galloway—“ad ejus

namque sacratissimum tumulum curantur infirmi, mundantur

leprosi.”—(_Vit. S. Ninian_, cap. xi.) He mentions specially two

cases:—

“Visi sunt præterea venire in civitatem viri duo leprosi. Qui

præsumptuosum æstimantes cum lepræ contagio scabiem tangere,

quasi delonge poscunt auxilium. Accedentes autem ad fontem, et

sanctum arbitrantes quidquid sanctus contigerat Ninianus,

lavacio illo se abluendos putarunt.... Mundantur leprosi tactu

lavacio, sed meritis Niniani.”—(_Vit. S. Niniani_, cap. xi. §

4; Pinkert. _Vit. Antiq. SS. Scot._, pp. 22, 23.)

All these writers—St. Aelred of Rievaux, Joceline of Furnes, and the

compiler of the Aberdeen Breviary—wrote so long after the Saints whose

miracles they commemorate, that their testimony cannot avail as proof in

itself of the existence of leprosy in Scotland in the seventh and eighth

centuries. Besides, they speak only in general terms—“leprosos

mundabat,”—which may be little or nothing more than a rhetorical

flourish. But the passages which have been quoted are at least

sufficient to demonstrate that in the twelfth century the existence of

leprosy in Scotland from a remote age was a matter of unquestioned

belief. Of the general prevalence of the disease on this side of the

Tweed in that and the subsequent age, there is abundant evidence

elsewhere in the Leges Burgorum and other ancient capitularies of Scotch

law.

The canon of the Scotch Church, “De monitionem faciendo leprosis,”

printed in the Registrum Episcopatus Aberdonensis, vol. ii. p. 32, and

elsewhere, belongs to the thirteenth century, probably to the latter

part of that century. If, as seems to be the case, it be merely a

diocesan statute, and not a statute for the whole of Scotland, it will

only show more forcibly the general prevalence of the disease. The

diocese for which it was enacted was apparently Aberdeen, containing at

that time about eighty parishes, and the number of lepers must have been

great before it could be found necessary to guard against the injury

done to the parochial clergy by the withdrawal of the dues and oblations

of the inmates of the leper hospitals.

LEPROSY IN WALES.

The Venedotian Code (the Laws of the Women)—

“Should her husband be leprous, or have fetid breath, or be

incapable of marital duties; if on account of one of these

three things she leave her husband, she is to have the whole

of her property.”—(_Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales_, p.

39. Lond. 1841.)

The Dimetian Code (of Women)—

“For three causes, if a woman desert her husband, she is not

to lose her agweddi [dowry]; for leprosy, want of connection,

and bad breath.”—(_Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales_, p.

255.)

The Laws of Howel Dda, according to the Gwentian Code (of Women)—

“For three causes a woman loses not her agweddi, although she

may leave her husband; to wit, on account of leprosy, bad

breath, and default of connection.”—(_Ancient Laws and

Institutes of Wales_, p. 365.)

These citations are from Aneurin Owen’s translation of the Welsh text of

the Welsh laws, published in parallel columns with the Welsh text by the

Record Commissioners. These laws are of uncertain date; they are

commonly attributed to Howel Dda, but bear interpolations or alterations

of much later date. The oldest MSS. of them are of the twelfth century.

I add the passages regarding lepers which occur in the Latin versions of

the Welsh Laws, the oldest MSS. of which are of the thirteenth

century:—

“Tribus de causis potest femina habere suum egwedy [suam

dotem], licet ipsa uirum relinquat; scilicet, si sit leprosus

uir; et si habeat fetidum anhelatum; et si cum ea concumbere

non possit.”—(_Liber Legum Howel Da_, lib. ii. cap. xx., sec.

xxxi. _Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales_, p. 796; Lond.

1841.)

“Tribus de causis habebat femina suum aguedi [suam dotem],

licet ipsa virum suum relinquat; id est, si leprosus sit vir;

et si fetidum hanelitum habueret; et si cum ea coire non

possit.”—(_Liber Legum Howel Da_, lib. ii. cap. xxiii. sec.

xiii. _Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales_, p. 827.)

“Leprosi cum seculum dimittunt ebedyw [_i.e._ heriot _seu_ caulp]

dare debent dominis suis.”—(_Liber Legum Howel Da_, lib. ii.

cap. xxii. sec. ix. _Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales_,

p. 797.)

The Dimetian Code (of Murder)—

“If there be a relative of the murderer, or of the murdered,

who is an ecclesiastic in holy orders, or in an ecclesiastical

community, or leprous, or dumb, or an idiot, such neither pays

nor receives any part of galanas” [assythment, or fines for

murder].—(_Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales_, p. 200.)

The Dimetian Code (Triads)—

“There are three persons, no one of whom, by law, can be a qualified

judge; one of them is, a person having a defect, as one who is deaf, or

blind, or leprous, or an insane person,” etc. etc.—(_Ancient Laws and

Institutes of Wales_, p. 200.)

The next class of passages is taken from what are called the “Anomalous

Welsh Laws,” which, in the state they are now found in, are supposed to

be of the sixteenth century:—

“If a person become a surety, and before the termination of

the suit he should become leprous, or a monk, or blind, ....

he must fulfil his promise while he lives.”—(_Ancient Laws

and Institutes of Wales_, p. 403.)

“There is to be no objection to a pleader, but for having

violated his religious profession, and quitting the world, or

his becoming a separated leper.”—(_Ancient Laws and

Institutes of Wales_, p. 516.)

“Three sons who are not to have patrimony—The son of a

priest, the son of a leper, and the son of a man who had paid

his patrimony as blood land. The son of a leper is not to have

it, because God has separated him from worldly kin—that is,

such son as a leper may have after being adjudged to a

lazar-house; and a son a priest shall have after taking

priestly orders; and the third has no patrimony, as his

father, prior to him, had determined it by law.”—(_Ancient

Laws and Institutes of Wales_, p. 556. See also p. 603.)

“Three persons to whom saraad [fine for insult] is not due—A

leper, a natural fool, and an alltud [an alien serf] who is

not married to an innate Cymraes: And, nevertheless, there is

worth in law attached to each of them, and whoever shall

ill-use them and injure them in person and property is subject

to a dirwy [fine or punishment].—(_Ancient Laws and

Institutes of Wales_, p. 656.)

“Three persons who are not to be invested with the judicial

function—An inefficient person, as one that is deaf, or

blind, or maimed, or leprous, or insane, or mute,” etc.

etc.—(_Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales_, p. 671.)

“A leper cannot be a pleader.”—(_Ancient Laws and Institutes

of Wales_, p. 764.)

The Welsh term for leper is _Clafwr_, obviously an adaptation of the

Latin word.

It should be kept in view that the license which the Welsh laws give to

the wife to leave a leprous husband is in direct contradiction to the

canon law as declared by Pope Alexander III. to the Archbishop of

Canterbury in 1180:—“Mandamus quatenus si qui sunt in provincia tua

viri vel mulieres qui lepræ morbum incurrunt, ut uxores viros et viri

uxores sequantur, et eis conjugali affectione ministrent, sollicitis

exhortationibus inducere non postponas. Si vero ad hoc induci non

poterunt, eis arctius injungas ut uterque altero vivente continentiam

servet. Quodsi mandatum tuum servare contempserint, vinculo

excommunicationis adstringas.”—(_Corpus Juris Canonici_, vol. ii. col.

656. Edit. 1747.)

The same Pope, in the same year, decreed that lepers might

marry:—“Leprosi autem si continere nolunt, et aliquam quæ sibi nubere

velit invenerint, liberum est eis ad matrimonium convolare.” He settled

another and more delicate point:—“Quodsi virum sive uxorem divino

judicio leprosum fieri contigerit, et infirmus a sano carnale debitum

exigat, generali præcepto Apostoli, quod exigitur est solvendum: cui

præcepto nulla in hoc casu exceptio invenitur.”—(_Corpus Juris

Canonici_, vol. ii. col. 656. Edit. 1747.)

Pope Urban III. found, in 1186, that subsequent leprosy was a sufficient

reason why betrothed persons should not be compelled to marry.—(_Corpus

Juris Canonici_, vol. ii. col. 657. Edit. 1747. See also col. 344.)

NOMENCLATURE OF THE DISEASE.—The terms “Leprosi” and “Elephantuosi.”

The “MS. History of the Durham Cathedral and Diocese,” referred to in

Sir James Simpson’s Paper, Part II. p. 77, was printed in Wharton’s

_Anglia Sacra_ in 1691, and more perfectly in the _Historiæ Dunelmensis

Scriptores Tres_, by the Surtees Society in 1839. The passage quoted

stands thus (pp. 11, 12):—

“Præterea Hospitale de Schyreburne construxit, et elefantiosos

in episcopatu suo circumquaque collectos, ibidem instituit,

aptisque eorum usibus habitaculis ampliant; et ne quid

sollicitudini caritatis deesset, ad eorum perpetuam

sustentationem et nonnullorum susceptionem terras et ecclesias

concessit et confirmavit. In geminum creditur esse bonum, quod

et pauperum necessitatibus liberrime prospexit, et societatem

immundorum a cohabitacione mundorum segregavit.”

“Elephantuosi” is here put as equivalent to “Leprosi.” In the Chronicle

of Battle Abbey, written about 1180-1200, some slight distinction seems

to be implied between the words. The writer is speaking of the Abbot

Walter, who died in 1171:—

“Leprosorum maxime et elephantiosorum ab hominibus ejectioni

compatiens, eos non solum non abhorrebat, verumetiam in

persona propria eis frequenter ministrans, eorum manus

pedesque abluendo fovebat, et intimo caritatis pietatisque

affectu blanda oscula imprimebat.”—(_Chronicon Monasterii de

Bello_, p. 135; Lond. 1846. Anglia Christiana.)

But, after all, the two terms may here be used merely rhetorically.

There are other instances of such a tautology. Ducange (t. iii. coll.

49, 50), quotes _Elephantiæ lepra_ and “Leprosi enim vere atque

Elephantia debent habere.” At the same time he cites from an old

Latin-French Glossary, “ELEPHANCIA = une maniere de mesclerie.” In the

same way some writers distinguish between _mesellerie_ and _cordrerie_.

On the other hand, the _Catholicon Anglicum_, an Anglo-Latin Dictionary

of the year 1483, has “A LEPYR = lepra, elefancia,

missella.”—(_Promptorium Parvulorum_, vol. i. pp. 297, 298. Lond. 1843.

Camden Soc.)

DESCRIPTION OF A LEPER.

Reginald of Durham (sometimes also called Reginald of Coldingham), a

Benedictine monk, who wrote before 1195, gives the following

description of a leper girl who had been for three years in the

hospital at Budele, near Darlington, in the bishopric of Durham:—

“Nempe omnem facierum illius superficiem laceræ putredinis

cicatrix nunquam sana totam obduxerat, et falliculis [_l._

folliculis] crudæ carnis sparsim patentibus et hiulco meatu

saniem venenoso meatu rimantibus, horridam cunctis visu

reddiderat. Labiorumque ipsius extrema circumquaque marcentia

diriguerant, quia particulares quasdam ejus regiones usque ad

profunda quædam dimensionum dispendia vis sæva diutini

languoris consumendo exederat. His itaque aliisque illius

aegritudinus modis corpus ejus dilaceratum periit,”

etc.—(_Libellus de Vita et Miraculis S. Godrici_, p. 456.

Lond. 1847. Surtees Soc.)

The leprosy is cured by a miracle at the tomb of S. Godric at Finchale,

when the appearance of the face is thus described:—

“tota sana comparuit, omnisque lepræ prioris fœda scabies

jam recesserat, labiaque illius sana ac tenua, facies vero

tota incontacta ac clara, velut parvuli cujusdam triennis

apparebat. Quæ una cum matre sospes domum rediit, quæ illo

prius tota lepræ pustulis et sanie contracta pervenit.”

Among other witnesses to the miraculous cure, Ralph Haget, sheriff of

Durham,

“dicebat quod facies ejus cutis licet sana, tenera sit et

clara, tamen ubi cicatrices ulcerum quondam fuerant illa

superficies videtur aliquantulum comparere subrufa; labiorum

vero extrema quæ frustris carneis pinis fuerant valliculata,

tota sunt plena atque rotunda, sed aliquanto altius

prominentia.”

This was confirmed also by Norman the priest of Hailtune, who got the

girl into the lepers’ hospital at Badele, near Darlington, and who

subsequently showed her to his parishioners in his church.—(_Libellus

de Vita et Miraculis S. Godrici_, pp. 457, 458.)

The same writer, in the same work, gives other descriptions of leprosy.

A young shepherd of the north of England “lepra percussus cunctis

horrori fuit.” He is miraculously cured—“tumorque omnis cum deformi

rubore fugatus abscesserat, novaque coloris insoliti superficies in

facie et toto corpore ipsius relucebat; et nulla omnino pustula vel

cicatricis macula in ipso residendo comparuit.”—(_Lib. de Vit. et

Mirac. S. Godrici_, p. 431.)

A woman—“diutino tempore toto corpore lepræ fuerat contagio maculisque

cum pustulis horrende perfusa ... cunctis horrida et detestenda, nulli

pene ad videndum tolerabilis fuerat.”—(_Lib. de Vit. et Mirac. S.

Godrici_, p. 431.)

RANK OF THE PERSONS ATTACKED BY LEPROSY.

In 1203, a piece of land in Sudton in Kent was in dispute in the King’s

court between two kinswomen—Mabel, the daughter of William Fitz Fulke,

and Avicia, the widow of Warine Fitz Fulke. Among other pleas, it was

urged by Avicia, that Mabel had a brother, and that his right to the

land must exclude her claim. Mabel answered that her brother was a

leper—“E contra dicit Mabilla quod leprosus est.” The judgment is not

recorded; but the notice shows two things—(1) The doctrine of the civil

death which followed leprosy; (2) The comparatively good condition of

the person who in this instance was smitten with leprosy.

The case is recorded in the _Placitorum in Domo Capitulari

Westmonesteriensi asservatorum Abbreviatio_, p. 39. Lond. 1811. Record

Commission.

In 1280 it was certified to King Edward I. that Adam of Gangy, brother

and heir of Ralph of Gangy, deceased, of the county of Northumberland,

holding land of the king in chief, was struck with leprosy (_leperia

percussus_), so that he could not conveniently repair to the king’s

presence to pay his homage to the king (quod ad presenciam Regis ad

homagium suum Regi faciendum commode accedere non potest). It was

therefore ordered that Thomas of Normanville, the elder, should in lieu

and turn of the king take the leper’s fealty for his lands.—(_Rotulorum

Originalium in Curia Scaccarii Abbreviatio_, vol. i. p. 33. Lond. 1805.)

Here, again, we see leprosy attacking a person of comparatively high

position. But here the disease neither inferred civil death nor excluded

the leper from all intercourse with his fellows.

In 1313, Nicholas the Leper (Nicholaus le Lepere) and William the Leper

(Willielmus le Lepere) are manucaptors or pledges that John de la Poile,

knight of the shire returned for Surrey, will do his duty in

Parliament.—(_Palgrave’s Parliamentary Writs_, vol. ii. pp. 89, 113.)

Here we have a family of note bearing the name of Leper, derived no

doubt from the leprosy of an ancestor.

Before 1083 a miraculous cure of leprosy is said to have been effected

at the shrine of St. Cuthbert at Durham, on the person of a noble of the

south of England—“vir quidam in longinqua Australium Anglorum regione

qui multæ nobilitatis gratia inter comprovintiales preditus erat. Hic

tam corporis sani virtute gaudebat, quam omni prosperitatis affluentia;

et divitiarum gloria cæteros excedebat,” etc. etc.—(_Reginaldi

Dunelmensis Libellus de Beati Cuthberti Virtutibus_, pp. 37-41. Lond.

1835. Surtees Soc.)

The same writer, in another work, relates the cure of three lepers at

the tomb of St. Godric of Finchale. One, a male, was a shepherd; the

other two were women, apparently of the middle or lower

ranks.—(_Reginaldi Dunelmensis Libellus de Vita et Miraculis S.

Godrici_, pp. 430, 431, 455-458. Lond. 1845. Surtees Soc.) The shepherd

was a youth (_juvenis_); one of the women was a girl (_puella_).

LEPERS AMONG THE CLERGY.

Another illustration of the prevalence of leprosy among the English

clergy, alluded to at p. 106, Part III., is supplied by the will of

Richard Basy, of Bylburgh, in Yorkshire, in 1393:—“Item lego

presbiteris cæcis vel leprosis seu aliter languentibus, qui non valent

celebrare circa divinum officium celebrandum, et aliis pauperibus eodem

modo languentibus et jacentibus, xl. solidos.”—(_Testamenta

Eboracensia_, vol. i. p. 192. Lond. 1836. Surtees Soc.)

Pope Lucius III. decreed in 1181 that rectors of churches who were

struck with leprosy should serve their cures by coadjutors; and Pope

Clement III., in 1190, ordained that leprous priests should be removed

from their priestly office, but should be supported from the fruits of

their benefices.—(_Corpus Juris Canonici_, vol. ii. coll. 447-448.

Edit. 1747.)

CASE OF KING ROBERT BRUCE.

The silence of Wyntoun, Fordun, and our other early Scotch chroniclers,

as to the disease of which King Robert Bruce died, may not improbably be

explained by their reluctance to associate the heroic monarch with an

odious and degrading malady. But the King’s metrical biographer names

his disease, or at least its origin; and it would be interesting to know

if that disease can be identified with leprosy.

“For a malice him tuk sa sar,

That he on na wiss mycht be thar.

This malice off enfundeying

Begouth; for, through his cald lying,

Quhen in his gret myscheiff wes he,

Him fell that hard perplexite.”

—(Barbour’s _Bruce_, pp. 406-407. Dr. Jamieson’s edit. 1820.)

In Mr. Cosmo Innes’ later edition the passage stands thus—

“For ane male es tuk him sa sar

That he on na wis mycht be thar.

His male es of ane fundying

Begouth, for throu his cald lying,

Quhen in his gret mischef was he,

Him fell that hard perplexite.”

—(Barbour’s _Bruce_, p. 469. Aberd. 1856. Spalding Club.)

What is “enfundeying,” as Dr. Jamieson calls it, or “ane fundying,” as

Mr. Innes makes it? Dr. Jamieson glosses it as “perhaps asthma,” but on

what ground I do not see. At the same time I am unable to suggest any

interpretation of the term. Can medical nomenclature supply none?

CONTAGIOUSNESS OF LEPROSY.

To the list of persons (Part III. pp. 133, 134) who tended or even

kissed lepers without being smitten with the disease, may be added

Walter de Luci, Abbot of Battle, in Sussex, from 1139 to 1171, who often

washed and kissed the feet and hands of lepers—_eorum manus pedesque

abluendo fovebat, et intimo caritatis pietatisque affectu blanda oscula

imprimebat_.—(_Chronicon Monasterii de Bello_, p. 135. Lond. 1846.

Anglia Christiana.)

The story (Sir James Simpson’s Paper, Part III. p. 134) quoted from

Matthew Paris, about the good Queen Maud, is to be found in an earlier

writer, St. Aelred of Rievaux, from whose _Genealogia Regum Anglorum_

Matthew Paris, or rather Roger of Wendover, borrowed it. It may be

remarked, generally, that late editors have shown that all that part of

Matthew Paris’ history which is previous to the year 1235 is really the

work of Roger of Wendover. As such it has been reprinted by the English

Historical Society.

LIST OF LEPER HOSPITALS.

_Oxford, St. Bartholomew._—The date of foundation of this hospital is

left blank in the list of British Leper Hospitals, p. 160. It certainly

existed before the 24th November 1200, when the lepers of St.

Bartholomew of Oxford had letters of protection from King John.—(_Rot.

Chart. in Turr. Lund._ vol. i. p. 99.)

_Berington._—On the 20th July 1199 King John confirms to the canons

regular of Lantony, among their other possessions, the half of

Berington, which had been given to them by the Earl Roger for the

procuration of thirteen lepers—“_Ex dono Rogeri Comitis aliam

dimidietatem de Berington ad procurationem tredecim

leprosorum._”—(_Rot. Chart. in Turr. Lund._ vol. i. p. 7.) “Procuratio”

seems to be used here in the sense of _necessaria ad victum et

vestitum_.—(See Ducange, t. v. col. 885.)

_Carlisle._—The lepers of Carlisle had letters of protection from King

John on 25th February 1201.—(_Rot. Chart. in Turr. Lund._ vol. i. p.

101.)

_Badele, near Darlington, in the county of Durham._—The reception of a

leprous girl into the hospital of Badele, about three miles from

Darlington, is related by Reginald of Durham in his _Libellus de Vita et

Miraculis S. Godrici_, p. 456. Lond. 1845. (Surtees Soc.) The work was

written before 1195.

_Canterbury._—The date of foundation of this hospital is left blank in

the list of British Leper Hospitals, p. 158. It certainly existed before

the death of Archbishop Lanfranc in 1089, for the contemporary historian

of Canterbury expressly says it was built by him:—“Ligneas domos in

devexo montis latere fabricans, eas ad opus Leprosorum delegavit, viris

in istis a fœminarum societate sejunctis.”—(_Eadmeri Hist. Novorum_,

p. 9. Lond. 1623.)

_York._—_One_ leper hospital at York is noted in the list of British

Leper Hospitals, at p. 161. There were _four_. The will of Henry of

Blythe, painter of York, in 1365, has this bequest:—“Item lego quatuor

domibus Leprosorum civitatis Eboracencis equaliter ij solidos

dividendos.”—(_Testamenta Eboracensia_, vol. i. p. 75. Lond. 1836.

Surtees Soc.) The will of Master Adam Wigan, rector of St. Saviour’s,

York, in 1433, has—“Item lego cuilibet domui quatuor domorum leprosorum

iij s. iiij d.—(_Test. Ebor._ vol. ii. p. 26. Lond. 1855. Surtees Soc.)

The will of Richard Russell, citizen and merchant of York, in 1435,

shows that at York, as elsewhere, the leper hospitals were beyond the

city walls:—“Et cuilibet leproso in quatuor domibus Leprosorum in

suburbiis Ebor., v solidos.”—(_Test. Ebor._ vol. ii. p. 55.) Again, in

the will of William Gyrlyngton, draper of York, in 1444:—“Item lego

quatuor domibus Leprosorum in suburbiis Ebor., xx solidos per equales

portiones.”—(_Test. Ebor._ vol. ii. p. 93.) The lepers of York have

similar bequests in 1446, in 1454, and 1441.—(_Test. Ebor._ vol. ii.

pp. 115, 182, 187.) I do not observe any legacies to them after 1454.

_Beverley._—The leper hospital here, as at York, Canterbury, Glasgow,

Stirling, Aberdeen, etc., stood in the suburbs. The will of John

Brompton, merchant of Beverley, in 1444, has this legacy—“Item leprosis

extra barras boriales Beverlaci ij s. et dimidiam celdram

carbonum.”—(_Test. Ebor._ vol. ii. p. 97.)

_Newcastle-upon-Tyne._—The will of Roger Thornton, merchant of

Newcastle, in 1429, has this legacy—“Item to the Lepre men of

Newcastell, xl s.”—(_Northern Wills and Inventories_, part i. p. 78.

Lond. 1835. Surtees Soc.)

_Winchester._—The existence of a leper hospital at Winchester is shown

by the will of Martin of Holy Rood, master of the hospital of Sherborn,

in 1259 [referred to in Sir James Simpson’s Paper, Part I., p.

36]—“Fratribus Leprosis Wyntonie, ij solidos.”—(_Northern Wills and

Inventories_, part i. p. 10.)

_Lynne, Norfolk._—_Five_ leper hospitals at Lynne, in Norfolk, are

enumerated in the list of British Leper Hospitals, p. 160. There seem to

have been _six_. Mr. Albert Way, in a note to the _Promptorium

Parvulorum_, vol. i. p. 297, Lond. 1843 (Camden Soc.), cites, from

Parkins’ _Account of Lynne, in Blomf. Norf._ iv. 608, the bequest of

Stephen Guybor, in 1432, to every house of lepers about Lynn, “namely,

at West Lynn, Cowgate, Herdwyk, Setchehithe, Mawdelyn, and Geywode.”

Four of these may be identified with those in the list, p. 160. “West

Lynn” and “Cowgate” are the same in both lists; “Mawdelyn” is “St. Mary

Magdalene’s;” and “Setchehithe” is “Setch Hithe.”

[Illustration: [SIZE OF ORIGINALS]]

ANCIENT GREEK MEDICINE VASES.]

NOTES ON SOME ANCIENT GREEK MEDICAL VASES FOR CONTAINING LYKION; AND ON

THE MODERN USE OF THE SAME DRUG IN INDIA.

The physicians and surgeons who, in ancient times, pursued their medical

profession at Rome, and in different parts of the Roman empire, have

left us various palpable relics of their craft. Thus, in the ruins of

Pompeii and Herculaneum, numerous surgical instruments, pharmacy and

drug-bottles, etc., have been found; and elaborate drawings and accounts

of these have lately been published by Savenko, Vulpes, Renzi, and

others. On the sites of the old Roman cities and colonies throughout

Western Europe, various surgical and medical relics of the same kind

have been at different times discovered; as lancets, probes,

cupping-glasses, scalpels, oculist-stamps, phials, etc. But of medicine,

as it was still earlier exercised in Greece and in the Grecian colonies,

few such tangible vestiges remain. We have, it is true, had carefully

transmitted down to us the imperishable professional writings of

Hippocrates and others of the purely Greek school; but time has spared

few, or indeed almost no, material remnants of the professional

instruments or vessels used by the ancient Greek surgeons and

physicians.

Perhaps the great rarity of such archæological remains may serve as some

apology for the present notice of some specimens of ancient Greek

medical vessels or vases. Besides, the vases which I wish to describe

are interesting in other points of view. They are all of them intended

to contain one and the same drug, as shown by the inscriptions on their

exterior; this drug was derived by the ancient Greeks chiefly from

Hindostan,—one of the many points of evidence of the former freedom and

frequency of the traffic between the south of Europe and India; and at

the present day the same drug is still employed extensively and

successfully, by the native practitioners of the East, for the very

purposes for which it was, in former times, used by the medical

practitioners of Greece.

The drug to which I allude is the _Indian Lycium_ or _Lykion_, the

ΛΥΚΙΟΝ ΙΝΔΙΚΟΝ of Dioscorides. In modern collections and

writings, I know of four ancient vases or drug-bottles intended to

contain this valued eye-medicine. If our museums, however, were properly

searched, perhaps various other Greek vases, for the same or for similar

medicines, would be detected. The four specimens of bottles or vases for

_Lycium_, to which I have adverted, are the following:—

1. In the collection of Greek antiquities contained in the British

Museum is a small vase, made of lead, and of the exact form and size

represented in Plate, Fig. 1. The vase is of a sub-ovoid form, and is

somewhat above an inch in height, and about three quarters of an inch in

breadth. An inscription, preceded by the ornament of a small tripod,

encircles the middle of the vase. The inscription is in Greek letters,

of which the following is a correct copy:—

[Illustration: ΛΥΚΙΟΝ ΠΑΡΑΜΟΥΣΑΙΟΥ]

This inscription may be read as ΛΥΚΙΟΝ ΠΑΡΑΜΟΥΣΑΙΟΥ—the _Lycium of

Paramusaeus_—as suggested to me by Mr. Birch, who first had the

kindness to direct my attention to this vase, or, and perhaps more

correctly, it may be rendered ΛΥΚΙΟΝ ΠΑΡΑ ΜΟΥΣΑΙΟΥ—the _Lycium_ sold

_by Musaeus_. Mr. Birch informs me that he thinks he met with the name

of _Paramusaeus_ as a medical practitioner in Fabricius’ _Bibliotheca

Græca_. I have not been fortunate enough to detect the name in question,

notwithstanding some considerable search through that learned work. On

the other hand, the name of _Museus_, or _Musaeus_, is well known in

Athenian biography. (See Fabricius’ _Bibliotheca_, vol. i. pp. 120-133.)

I should, perhaps, have already stated, that the vase in question was

sent to the British Museum, among a collection of antiquities from

Athens.

2. Through the kindness of M. Sichel of Paris, I am enabled to give, in

Plate, Fig. 2, an engraving of a second _Lycium_ jar, not hitherto

published, of nearly the same dimensions as the specimen contained in

the British Museum. This second specimen is not made of lead, but of

pottery-ware. It bears upon its side the inscription:—

HΡΑΚΛΕΙᵒΥ

ΛΥΚᵒN

This inscription—“the _Lycium of Heracleus_”—has the word ΛΥΚΟΝ spelt

without the I; errors of this kind being, as is well known, very common

in old Greek and Roman letterings.

3. M. Millin of Paris published, nearly forty years ago, an account of a

similar vase, found at Tarentum, a well-known Greek colony and

settlement (_Description d’un Vase trouvé à Tarente._ Paris, 1814). This

vase is slightly larger than either of the above, but somewhat

mutilated. It is made of clay, and has on its front, in Greek letters,

the inscription _Lycium of Jason_.

IAϹᵒNᵒϹ

ΛΥΚΙᵒN

The form and size of this jar are represented in Plate, Fig. 3. M.

Millin fancied that probably this small vase or jar was intended as a

child’s toy; but two years after he wrote, M. Tochon d’Anneci gave an

account of a similar jar, and first suggested that it must have been

destined to contain a collyrium or an ointment—_destinè à contenir un

collyre ou un onguent_. (See his _Dissertation sur l’Inscription

Grecque, et sur les Pierres Antiques_, etc., Paris, 1816.)

4. The vase described by M. Tochon is delineated in Plate, Figs. 4, 5,

and 6. It is of the same material, and nearly of the same size, but less

mutilated than that previously delineated by M. Millin. It presents also

in front the same inscription (see Fig. 5), namely—

ΙΑϹᵒΝᵒϹ

ΛVΚΙᵒN

M. Tochon believes, further, that this vase was found, like that of

Millin, at Tarentum. At least, it was originally given to M. Tochon by a

person who had resided for a long time in that city, and who had himself

acquired the specimen there. M. Sichel has reason to think it not

improbable that his specimen (Fig. 2) also came from Tarentum. And it is

perhaps not uninteresting to remark, that Galen, Celsus, and various

other old medical authors, repeatedly mention a Greek physician of the

name of Heracleus or Heraclides, who practised at Tarentum, and was the

author of various treatises on the Materia Medica, etc. (See an

enumeration of his writings, etc. in Kühn’s _Opuscula_, vol. ii., p.

156, etc.) Among his large collection of collyria and medicines for

diseases of the eye, Galen gives formulæ for making different eye

medicines bearing the name of Heracleus, as, for example, two

“_agglutinatoria pilorum Heraclidæ Tarentini_ (Ἥρακλεῖδου Ταραντίνοῦ).

See Kuhn’s edition of _Galen_, vol. xii. p. 741.

The medicine mentioned in the preceding inscriptions, the LYCIUM or

ΛΥΚΙΟΝ, was a drug which enjoyed much favour among the ancients; and it

was supposed to be possessed of great medical value and virtues. It was

used principally as an astringent remedy to restrain inflammatory and

other discharges. Dioscorides, Galen, Oribasius, and Paulus Ægineta,

dilate upon the medicinal properties of the Lycium. Dioscorides

recommends it as an astringent for the cure of various complaints, as

obscurities of the cornea, psoriasis, and pruritus of the eyelids,

purulent ears and tonsils, ulcers of the gums, chapped lips, fissure of

the anus; in cæliac and dysenteric affections, both in draughts and

clysters; in hæmoptysis and coughs; in female fluxes, hydrophobia, and

so forth. The Indian variety, he states, cures inflammation of the

spleen and jaundice, prevents menstruation, purges water, and is a

counter-agent to deadly poisons. (Dr. Adam’s Trans. of _Paulus Ægineta_,

vol. iii. p. 234.) Two varieties of Lycium were in use—one obtained from

Lycia and Cappadocia, etc., and the other from India. The latter was

regarded as by far the most valuable. Thus, when treating of the two

varieties of Lycium, Galen mentions the Indian as the most powerful for

all purposes—τὸ Ἰνδικὸν ἰσχῦρότερόν ἐστιν εἰς ἅπαν. (_De

Simp. Medicam._ lib. vii. 64.) Such late writers as Paulus Ægineta,

Ætius, etc., allude also to the superior value of the Indian variety.

For instance, in Roxarius’ edition of _Oribasius_ it is stated that the

Indian Lykion “præstat ceteris et est efficacius.” (_Medicin. Collect._

lib. xi.) Avicenna, the celebrated Arabian physician, who gives a long

account of the medical uses, etc., of Lykion, remarks, “Magis vincens,

secundum existimationem, est quod Indicum est,” etc.; and he compares

its properties with that from Mecca. (_Canon Medicinæ_, Lib. ii. cap.

398.)

Of all the uses to which the Lycium was applied in medicine, by far the

most important was the employment of this drug, and particularly of the

Indian variety, as a collyrium or local application to the eye, in the

treatment of different varieties and forms of ophthalmic inflammation.

Thus Scribonius Largus, the reputed body physician to the Emperor

Claudius, and one of the most original among the ancient medical

writers, declares that “he attributes to no collyrium whatever such

great efficacy as to the genuine _Indian Lycium_ used by itself. For

if,” says he, “near the commencement of ophthalmia, any one anoints

himself with this collyrium, he will immediately—that is, on the same

day—be freed from present pain and future swelling. It is unnecessary

(he adds) to dilate on its virtues, for a person experienced only in

other collyria would scarcely credit the effects of this simple drug.”

(_De Composit. Medicamentorum_, cap. 3.) Marcellus lauds its power in

nearly the same words. (_De Medicam. Lib._ cap. 8.)

The Lykion, or Lycium, is still used extensively by the native medical

practitioners of India, under the Hindoo name of _Rusot_ or _Ruswut_. In

a learned article on the nature of the λύκιον of Dioscorides, contained

in the _Transactions of the Linnæan Society_, vol. xvii. p. 82,

Professor Royle has shown that the Indian Lycium or Rusot is an

inspissated extract, prepared from the wood or roots of several species

of Berberis, as the _Berberis lycium_, _aristata_, etc., growing on the

mountains and plains of Upper India, and principally procured from

Nuggur-kote, near Lahore.[366] “On inquiring,” says Dr. Royle, “in the

shops of the druggists in the bazaars of India, I everywhere learned

that both the wood (_dar-huld_) and the extract Rusot were imported from

the hills into the plains, and that large quantities continued to be

brought from Nuggur-kote as well as other places.” And he adds,—“The

_Rusot_ is at the present day procurable in every bazaar in India, and

used by the native practitioners, who are fond of applying it both in

incipient and chronic inflammation of the eye; and in the latter state

both simply and in combination with opium and alum. It is sometimes

prescribed by European practitioners; and I have heard that it was found

very efficacious by Mr. M^cDowell in the ophthalmia of soldiers who had

returned from the expedition to Egypt. I have myself occasionally

prescribed it; and the native mode of application makes it particularly

eligible in cases succeeding acute inflammation, where the eye remains

much swollen. The extract is, by native practitioners, in such cases,

rubbed to a proper consistence with a little water, sometimes with the

addition of opium and alum, and applied in a thick layer over the

swollen eyelids; the addition of a little oil I have found preferable,

as preventing the too rapid desiccation. Patients generally express

themselves as experiencing considerable relief from the application.”

My friend, Dr. Wise, the author of that learned work _Commentaries on

the Hindoo System of Medicine_, some time ago brought to Scotland with

him a small quantity of the Indian Lykion. I have seen one or two cases

of recent conjunctival ophthalmia treated by the application of this

Lykion, with speedy relief and cure. Dr. Wise has been so good as

furnish me with the following interesting letter regarding his own

extended experience with it.

“The use (says Dr. Wise) of the mixture of Lykion or Ruswut is very

generally known over Hindostan, where diseases of the eye are common,

and probably over Asia and Africa, if we are to believe that this was

the black application employed with such success to the diseased eyes of

our soldiers in Egypt. It is likewise probable that Dioscorides obtained

it nearly two thousand years ago from the East, where the plant is

indigenous, and introduced it into Europe. Having found great personal

benefit from the application of the mixture of Lykion to my eyes when

inflamed, I employed it extensively when superintendent of the Eye

Infirmary, Calcutta; and so convinced was I of its efficacy, that I

brought a supply with me to Europe, with the intention of bringing it to

the notice of the profession. I found you investigating the subject; and

at your suggestion, Dr. Walker was so kind as to try the medicine, and I

am sure will inform you of the results he saw derived from its use. The

Indian mixture consists of equal weights of Lykion and burnt alum, with

half the weight of opium. These ingredients are mixed with lemon-juice,

and reduced to the consistence of cream, and applied round the eyelids

and over the eyebrow of the inflamed eyes. This mixture is washed off,

and again applied twice in twenty-four hours; and it was only when

accompanied with fever, that aperients and other parts of the

antiphlogistic regimen were required. In less urgent cases the mixture

was only applied at night, and produced no inconvenience, unless when it

dried, and the lids felt stiff, when it was softened by applying a

little moisture. I found the Lykion mixture most useful in all cases of

inflammation of the external tunics of the eye. When both eyes were

inflamed, it was interesting to mark the advantage this simple remedy

had when applied to one eye, while the usual remedies of leeches,

blisters, etc., were applied to the other eye. Another most important

application of the Lykion is when the ophthalmia is accompanied with

severe pain. On such occasions, after applying the mixture, a piece of

live charcoal (_gool_) produced the most soothing effect when approached

near the eye. With this intention, the charcoal was placed upon an

earthen cup, and held on a wooden stand by the patient, and he

approached or withdrew it from the eye according to his own feeling. The

great relief in this case was in part from the anodyne effect of the

opium.”

Mr. Walker has kindly given me the following note of his experience with

the Lykion at the Edinburgh Eye Dispensary:—

“I have used (he writes me) the Indian Lykion in a considerable number

of cases of eye-disease. The affections in which I found it most useful

were those of the conjunctiva, such as the simple, catarrhal, and

pustular forms of inflammation. In them its action was well marked and

beneficial, the disease generally subsiding in a day or two; sooner

perhaps than it would have done under the ordinary treatment. I have had

no opportunity of trying it in purulent ophthalmia; but I believe that

in it also it would prove of service. Cases of slight rheumatic and

catarrho-rheumatic inflammations have been benefited, but not cured, by

it alone. In some affections of the eyelids, as ophthalmia tarsi and

chronic ophthalmia, it did good; but such cases often get well with very

little treatment. I applied it to the eyelids in the form of a paste,

with opium and burnt alum, as recommended by Dr. Wise. This was repeated

two or three times a day. The patients generally complained of a burning

and smarting of the lids after its application, similar to what is

produced by a mustard blister.”

The four ancient Greek vases, mentioned in the preceding notice as

inscribed with the name of the drug _Lykion_ or _Lycium_, are each of

very small dimensions, the Plate representing all of them of their

original sizes and forms. They are small, in consequence, in all

probability, of the foreign drug which they contained being difficult to

procure in large quantities, and being hence an article of high price in

the markets of Greece and Italy. The value set upon the contained drug

would seem to be indicated by another circumstance—namely, by the shape

of the interior of the vases. In the specimens described by Millin and

Tochon, the cavity of the jars is narrow and conical from above

downwards, the mouth being wide, and the interior becoming more and more

tapering and contracted as it descends downwards. The section of the

interior of the vase of Tochon, given in Plate, Fig. 6, represents this

peculiar and deceitful form of the cavity. In consequence of this

peculiarity in their form, these jars contained, in fact, much less of

the Lykion than their mere external appearance indicated. This remark,

at least, holds true of the two vases from Tarentum bearing the name of

_Jason_. The vase of _Museus_ from Athens, belonging to the British

Museum, appears more honest at least in its construction. The high price

of the pure Lykion probably led also to the fact mentioned specially by

Dioscorides (lib. i. cap. 133), Pliny (lib. xxiv. cap. 14), and Serapion

(lib. ii. cap. 398), of the frequent adulteration of the drug. And,

perhaps, as in similar inscriptions on some modern medicine-nostrums and

packets, the names of the preparer or vendor, _Jason_, _Heracleus_, and

_Museus_, stamped on the vases, were added in attestation of the purity

and unadulterated character of the drug which these vases contained.

[Illustration: Fig. I., Fig. II.

ROMAN INSCRIPTIONS TO MEDICAL OFFICERS.]

WAS THE ROMAN ARMY PROVIDED WITH MEDICAL OFFICERS?

Little or nothing has hitherto been written by archæologists regarding

the medical staff of the Roman army. Indeed, in none of our common works

on Roman antiquities, as in those of Rosini, Kennet, Adam, Smith,

Ramsay, etc., is there any allusion whatever made to the question,

whether or not the Roman troops were furnished with medical officers. In

one anonymous work on Roman antiquities, translated from the French, and

published in London in 1750, the subject is referred to, the author

stating that during the commonwealth there were no physicians in the

Roman armies; and he adds that, even under the Emperors, “it does not

appear there were any physicians in the armies, as there are surgeons in

ours.”[367] Nor does there exist, as far as I am aware, in the Roman

classics, any very distinct allusion to the matter. I have also, in

vain, searched among Roman medical authors, and among the writings of

the Greek physicians who practised at Rome, for any direct notices,

relative to the medical or surgical care of the numerous and scattered

armies employed by Rome in the different quarters of the world. In fact,

the only passages, with which I am acquainted, relating at all to the

subject, consist of a casual remark in one of the military epistles of

Aurelian; two incidental legal observations contained in the law

writings of Modestinus, and in the Codex of Justinian; an allusion by

Vegetius to the medical care and expense of the sick in camp; and an

expression by Galen as to the opportunities for anatomical observation

presented to the physicians during the German wars.

The reference to the medical superintendence of the army by Aurelian

occurs in Vopiscus’ Life of that Emperor (chap. vi.) In issuing some

peremptory orders regarding the discipline of the army, after

enumerating various rigid rules which the soldiers were to observe,

Aurelian concludes with the following admonition and announcement:—“Let

each soldier aid and serve his fellow; let them be cured gratuitously by

the physicians (_a medicis gratis curentur_); let them give nothing to

soothsayers; let them conduct themselves quietly in their hospitia; and

he who would raise strife, let him be lashed.”[368] The date of this

order is not earlier than A.D. 270, the year when Aurelian became

Emperor.

When treating of those who, by absence from Rome, etc., were exempted

from some burthens and taxes, the jurist Modestinus, who wrote in the

earlier half of the third century, mentions, among others, the military

physicians (_Medici Militum_), “because,” he adds, “the office which

they fill is beneficial to the public, and ought not to be productive of

any injury to themselves (quoniam officium, quod gerunt, et publice

prodest, et fraudem eis adferre non debet”).[369]

In Justinian’s _Corpus Juris Civilis_, lib. x. tit. 52, drawn up in the

sixth century, there is a series of laws, “De Professoribus et Medicis.”

The first of these laws exempts the physician of a legion (_Medicum

Legionis_) from civil duties when he is absent in the public

service.[370]

In his work _De Re Militari_, Vegetius, who wrote towards the end of the

fourth century, devotes a chapter (lib. iii. 2) to the regulation of the

health of an army; and incidentally rather than directly alludes to the

cure of sick soldiers by the skill of the physicians (_arte

medicorum_).[371] Enumerating also elsewhere the duties of the Præfect

of the Camp, he states that his authority extended over his sick

fellow-soldiers, and the physicians who had the care of them, and he

regulated the expenses relative thereto. (Lib. ii. cap. 10.)

The passage I have alluded to as in the works of Galen is of an earlier

date than any of the preceding, and is to be found in liber iii. cap. 2,

of his work, _De Compositione Medicamentorum per Genera_. In discoursing

regarding the treatment of wounds, he talks of the necessity of a

knowledge of human anatomy for their proper management. In order to know

the anatomy of man, he recommends here, as elsewhere, the anatomy of the

monkey to be studied, maintaining that without such knowledge you cannot

take due advantage of the opportunities that you may accidentally have

presented to you of becoming acquainted with the anatomical structure of

human bodies. And he adds, that in consequence of a want of this

knowledge the physicians (οἱ ἰατροι) employed in the German wars, and

having the power of dissecting the bodies of the barbarians, did not

learn more than the cooks understand.[372]

This paragraph, though indistinct as regards the status and office of

these Ἰατροι, is still sufficiently explicit as to the fact

that there were physicians in the Roman army during the German wars that

Galen alludes to; and these wars were no doubt those that occurred from

the year A.D. 167 to 175, immediately previous to the time when Galen

wrote the work from which we have quoted.

The history of other more ancient governments than that of Rome is not

without allusion to the office of army physicians. Homer,[373]

Herodotus,[374] and Pliny,[375] each comment on the number and fame of

the medical men with which the kingdom of Egypt abounded. Diogenes

Laertius, in his life of Plato, tells us of Plato’s sickness when

travelling in Egypt; and adds that he remarked, like Homer, that the

Egyptians were all physicians (φαναι παντας ἀνθρώπους Αἴγυπτιους ἰατρους

εἰναι).[376] They had, moreover, paid medical officers attendant upon

their troops in war. For, in describing the status and character of the

Egyptian physicians, Diodorus Siculus specially mentions that, when

engaged in military expeditions, the soldiers were cured without fees,

for the physicians of the army received a salary from the state.[377]

One instance is referred to in history, in which an Egyptian king, when

thrown from his horse in battle, wounded and speechless from injury of

the head, had his skull trepanned by his surgeons. I allude to Ptolemy

Philometor, who defeated Alexander Balas, the pretender to the throne of

Syria, in the year B.C. 146. According to Livy, the victor himself died

after the battle during the attempts of his surgeons to relieve him.

“Ptolemaeus, in caput graviter vulneratus, inter curationem, dum ossa

medici _terebrare_ contendunt, exspiravit.”—(_Epit._ lib. lii.)

Nor is the old classical literature of Greece without reference to

surgical services tendered to the soldier in war. Homer describes the

double character of army surgeons and warriors as combined in the

persons of Podalirius and Machaon.[378] And when the latter is wounded,

he puts into the mouth of Idomeneus the well-known expression (Iliad,

lib. xi. v. 514), that the medical man is to the army more valuable than

many warriors; knowing as he does how to excise arrows, and to apply

soothing medications:—

Ιητρος γαρ ανηρ πολλῶν ἀνταξιος ἀλλων,

Ιους τ’ ἐκταμνειν, επι τ’ ηπια φαρμακα πασσειν.

In the course of the Iliad, the surgical treatment followed in

individual cases among the disabled Greek warriors is sometimes minutely

entered upon; and thus the different modes of operation by which the

transfixing arrow, dart, and lance, were, in those early days of

surgical science, removed from the bodies of the wounded, may be

sometimes gathered from Homer’s lucid and minute descriptions. He

mentions three different methods, at least, by which war-weapons were

extracted—viz., first, by evulsion, or traction of the weapon

backwards, as in the case of Menelaus (Iliad, lib. iv. 214); secondly,

by protrusion, or pushing of the instrument forward, as in the case of

Diomede (v. 112); and, thirdly, by enlarging the wound, and cutting out

the weapon, as was the practice of Patroclus in the case of Eurypylus

(xi. 843). I am not aware that Homer ever individualises any internal

medical treatment except once (xi. 638), when he mentions a mixture of

Pramnian wine, cheese, and flour, as having been administered by the

nursing hand of Hecamede to the wounded Machaon,[379] ere she prepared

the warm bath for him and washed away the clotted blood (xiv. 7).

The author of the ancient Greek treatise Περὶ Ἰητρου, an essay usually

included in the works of Hippocrates, explicitly advises the young

physician to attach himself for a time to some army, in order to learn

the best methods of extracting war-weapons, and to acquire practical

skill in the treatment of accidents.[380]

Xenophon alludes in various parts of his works to physicians or surgeons

connected with the Greek armies. In describing the laws of the

Lacedemonians, as instituted in the earliest ages of Greek history by

Lycurgus, he incidentally mentions that physicians were attached to the

Spartan army. For in the arrangements previously laid down for the

troops before a battle, it was ordered that there should be placed

behind the station occupied by the King several officials, and among

others, the soothsayers or priests, the physicians, the minstrels, the

leaders of the army, and any persons who were voluntarily present in the

expedition (καὶ μάντεις, καὶ ἰατροὶ, καὶ αὐληταὶ, οἱ τοῦ στρατοῦ ἄρχοντες,

καὶ ἐθελούσιοι ἠν τινες πατρῶσιν).

Again, in his celebrated account of the retreat of the ten thousand

Greeks, Xenophon states that at the conclusion of the fifth day of their

march, and after considerable skirmishing with the troops of

Tissaphernes, “they appointed eight physicians, for there were many

persons wounded.”[381]—(_Anabasis_, lib. iii. c. 4, § 30.)

Lastly, in his semi-historical or political romance—the _Cyropædia_

(lib. i. 6, § 15), Xenophon makes his young royal hero, Cyrus, the

founder of the Persian monarchy, speak, among other matters, of the

importance of medical officers being attached to armies. “With respect

to health” (says Cyrus), “having heard and observed that cities that

wish health choose physicians, and that commanders, for the sake of

their soldiers, take physicians; so, when I was placed in this command,

I immediately attended to this point; and I believe that I have men with

me that are very skilful in the art of physic.” In the same work

Xenophon subsequently describes Cyrus as commending to the professional

services and care of his medical officers the Chaldeans who had been

wounded and captured in fight with him.—(_Instit. Cyri_, lib. iii. c.

2, § 12.)

Few individual instances are recorded in Greek history of surgical aid

being afforded on the field of battle. One of the most interesting

examples is that mentioned by Quintus Curtius in reference to Alexander

the Great at the taking of the capital of the Oxydraceæ, or Mallians.

The Macedonian King, who had leaped down, almost alone, within the walls

of the fortress, was struck with a long arrow (duorum cubitorum

sagitta), which entered the right side of the thorax (per thoracem

paulum super latus dextrum infigeretur). The wound produced great

hæmorrhage and faintness. Alexander was carried on his shield to his

tent; and the shaft of the arrow being cut off and his cuirass removed,

it was discovered that the head of the arrow was barbed, and could not,

consequently, be removed without the artificial dilatation of the wound

and imminent danger from increased bleeding; for the large weapon was

fixed in its situation, and seemed to have penetrated into the internal

viscera (quippe ingens telum adactum erat, et penetrasse in viscera

videbatur). At Alexander’s request, the surgeon Critobulus undertook the

extraction, enlarged the wound, and removed the arrow-head, which,

according to Plutarch, was “three fingers broad and four long.” Great

hæmorrhage (ingens vis sanguinis) attended the operation; death-like

insensibility supervened; and, when the flow of blood continued in

despite of the medicaments (medicamenta) applied, a cry and wail was set

up by those around, that the king was dead. At last, however, the

hæmorrhage stopped, under the state of syncope. That very syncope,

observes Arrian, saved his life; and Alexander gradually recovered. But

every modern surgeon must admire the boldness, not less than the

expertness, of Critobulus, when he reflects for a moment on the fearful

peril attendant on such an operation, performed on so august a

patient—and at a time, too, when surgical science as yet possessed no

certain means of restraining surgical hæmorrhage.[382]

In the earlier periods of Roman history and Roman warfare, the treatment

of the military sick and wounded was, in all probability, trusted to the

casual care of some fellow-soldiers whose tastes and inclinations had

led them to pay more than usual care to the rude surgery which existed

at the time.[383] As early, however, as the commencement of the

Christian era, we find Celsus laying down distinct, and in many

instances very excellent and practical precepts for the extraction of

war-weapons from the bodies of the wounded[384]—as of arrows, spears,

leaden bullets (_glandes plumbeæ_), etc.

Occasionally the weapons used in ancient war seem to have been forged

for the special purpose of rendering their extraction by the surgeon a

matter of difficulty and danger. At least we find Paulus Ægineta

complaining that some of them have “their barbs diverging in opposite

directions, like the forked lightning, in order that, whether pulled or

pushed, they may fasten in the parts.”[385]

Still, let me repeat, neither in Celsus nor in Paulus Ægineta, nor,

indeed, in any other ancient medical work, have we, as far as I know,

any allusion to the circumstance of surgeons or physicians being

regularly appointed as army medical officers in the Roman army, for the

purpose of superintending the treatment of the wounded, or—what is of

still greater importance—in order to take professional care of the

soldiers disabled by sickness and disease, and whose number in warfare

is generally very much greater than the number of those that are

disabled in fight.

Modern military experience has, in many instances, proved the high

importance of the services and superintendence of a medical military

staff; and not so much in reference to the care of individual cases, and

the cure of the wounded, as in reference to the general health and

consequent general strength and success of whole armies. In fact, in war

the devastations produced by sickness and disease have often been found

greatly more formidable and fatal than any devastations produced by the

sword; fevers, dysenteries, and other distempers of the camp, have

carried off far more soldiers than the ball or bayonet; malarious and

morbific agency has sometimes terminated a campaign as effectually as

the highest military strategy; and armies have occasionally, in later

times, been as completely destroyed by the indirect ravages of disease

as by the direct effects of battle.

Nor was the experience of the Roman armies in this respect different

from our own. When the Emperor Septimius Severus determined to subdue

the whole of Scotland, he about the year 208 led, according to Herodian

and Dion Cassius,[386] an army of not less than 80,000 men across the

Forth, marched them north, apparently as far as the Moray Firth, and

thence returned to York. But though in this course the Roman Emperor

nowhere met the enemy in open fight, he is stated to have lost, in this

single campaign, not less than 50,000 of his troops. The marshes, fens,

woods, etc., of Caledonia were far more destructive to the Roman

invaders, than were the spears, long swords (ingentes gladii) and

scythed chariots (corvini) of its painted, and almost naked,

warriors.[387]

We know, from the oft-repeated anecdote regarding Arcagathus, as told by

Pliny, that in the early days of republican Rome the practice of

medicine was not encouraged among the inhabitants of the Eternal City.

But, in the later periods of the empire, Rome abounded with native and

foreign physicians; and, when we find the Roman people exalted in so

many branches of art and knowledge, we could not but expect that common

experience, and results like that of Severus, would have suggested to

them the propriety of increasing the strength and success of their

armies, by having medical men to watch over the health of the soldiers

that were fighting in so many different regions around the Roman

standards.

Some modern discoveries in Great Britain and elsewhere show that such a

conjecture is not at variance with truth, and that the Roman armies were

provided, at all events in the time of the Empire, with a medical staff.

Housesteads, in Northumberland (the ancient Borcovicus), formed one of

the principal stations on the great defensive wall which the Emperor

Hadrian reared, in the second century, from the Tyne to the Solway. Many

Roman remains have been found at Housesteads.[388] Thirty years ago the

embellished monumental tablet, represented in the accompanying plate,

Fig. 1, was discovered among these remains. This tablet was, according

to the inscription upon it, raised by the first Tungrian cohort to the

memory of their MEDICUS ORDINARIUS.[389] The plate represents this

interesting relic, which is preserved in the Newcastle Museum. The

inscription upon the tablet reads as follows, in its contracted and in

its extended forms:—

D M D[IIS] M[ANIBUS]

ANICIO ANICIO

INGENUO INGENUO

MEDICO MEDICO

ORD COH ORD[INARIO] COH[ORTIS]

I TUNGR [PRIMÆ] TUNGR[ORUM]

VIX AN XXV VIX[IT] AN[NIS] XXV

And I append Mr. Brace’s translation of it:—“Sacred to the gods of the

shades below. To ANICIUS INGENUUS, Physician in Ordinary of Cohort the

first of the Tungrians. He lived twenty-five years.”[390]

The first Tungrian Cohort, which erected this monument over the grave of

their young physician, distinguished itself under Agricola at the battle

of the Mons Grampius.[391] It was afterwards, as we learn from some

legionary inscriptions, engaged at Castlecary in erecting there a

portion of the more northern Roman wall of Antoninus, which ran from the

Forth to the Clyde.[392] Subsequently it was stationed at Cramond, near

Edinburgh, and there raised an altar to the _Matres Alatervæ et

Campestres_.[393] Still later, this Cohort was stationed in Cumberland;

and latterly at Housesteads, in Northumberland, where the monument

we allude to, and several others, were erected by them.[394]

The youth of this military physician is remarkable. He died at

twenty-five.

The elaborate nature of the carving of this monumental tablet affords

the strongest evidence of the esteem and respect in which this young

physician was held by his Cohort. In fact, it is more ornamented than

many of the altars raised by this and other Cohorts to the worship of

their gods.

It has been suggested by Mr. O’Callaghan[395] that the animal

represented on the monument is a hare, and that it was selected as an

emblem characteristic of the watchfulness of the profession to which

ANICIUS INGENUUS belonged. In his admirable work on the Roman Wall, the

Rev. Mr. Bruce describes, more correctly, the figure to be that of a

rabbit; and he further conjectures that it had some reference to the

worship of Priapus. The whole device is, in all probability, far more

simple in its signification. The _cuniculus_, or rabbit, when found on

ancient Roman monuments and coins, is generally held by archæologists

and numismatists as the recognised emblem of Spain,[396] as, for

example, on the coins of Sextus Pompey and Galba; and the circular

bucklers or cetræ which are placed on this tablet, on either side of the

animal, are equally strong characteristics of the same country. Indeed,

there can be little or no doubt that these devices indicate merely that

this young military physician was of Spanish birth and origin.

Several monumental and votive tablets have been discovered in other

parts of the old Roman world, affording further evidence of the Roman

troops being provided with a medical staff. In Gruter’s great work on

Roman inscriptions there are copies of at least three inscriptions, in

which physicians of Cohorts (_medici cohortum_) are mentioned.[397] One

of these inscriptions (p. 219, 3) bears the name of a physician who had

the same _nomen gentilicium_ as the medical officer of the Tungrian

Cohort who died at Housesteads—viz., “M. JULIUS INGENUUS MEDIC. COH.

II. VIG.” The tablet, which was found at Rome, contains a votive

imperial inscription from twelve or thirteen persons, and among others,

from the physician to the second “Cohors Vigilum.” Another of the

inscriptions of Gruter is specially interesting in relation to its date,

for it was cut at the commencement of the reign of Domitian,[398] and in

the year of the consulship of F. Flavius Sabinus, which year

chronologists know to have been the eighty-third of the Christian era.

We are, consequently, afforded evidence by this inscription that before

the end of the first century, at least—however much earlier—medical

officers were appointed to the Cohorts of the Roman army. The

inscription itself is upon an altar or votive tablet, dedicated by

SEXTUS TITUS ALEXANDER, physician of the fifth Prætorian Cohort, to

Æsculapius, and the safety of his fellow-soldiers. A copy of this altar

and its inscription is given in the accompanying plate, Fig. 2. The

stone seems to have been found at Rome.

Another altar, discovered also at Rome, and inscribed in the same terms

to Æsculapius, is given by Gruter (p. 68, 2). In this instance, the

dedicator is SEXTUS TITIUS, medical officer to the sixth Prætorian

Cohort; and he erects it for the health of the fellow-soldiers of his

Cohort, in conformity with a vow which he had undertaken. The whole

inscription is as follows:—

ASCLEPIO ET. SALUTI

COMMILITIONUM COH. VI. PR.

VOTO. SUSCEPTO

SEX. TITIUS. MEDIC. COH.

VI. PR.

D. D.

Long ago Reines published in his _Syntagma Inscriptionum_,[399] a tablet

found at Rome and erected by TITUS CLAUDIUS JULIANUS, Clinical Physician

to the fourth Prætorian Cohort, to himself, to his wife Tullia Epigone,

to their freedmen, freedwomen, and descendants.

D. M.

TI. CLAUDIUS. IULIANUS

MEDICUS. CLINICUS. COH. IIII.

PR. FECIT. VIVOS. SIBI. ET

TULLIÆ EPIGONE. CONIUGI

LIBERTIS. LIBERTATIBUS (Q)

CLAUDIIS. POSTERISQUE

EORUM

H. M. H. N. S.

Muratori, in his Thesaurus,[400] cites a Roman sepulchral tablet

discovered at Veterbi, and containing an inscription by a father to his

deceased son, M. VLPIUS SPORUS, Physician to the Indian and Asturian

Auxiliaries (Medico Alarum Indianae et tertiae Asturum).[401]

The tablets to which I have hitherto alluded all refer, with the

doubtful exception of the first and last, to one rank of medical

military men, namely the surgeons of cohorts (_Medici Cohortum_). It is

generally believed that each cohort consisted of about 500 or 600 men;

though this appears to have varied at different times. From the

preceding tablets, each cohort seems to have been provided with at least

one medical officer, if not more. For the distinctive terms “Ordinarius”

and “Clinicus,” which occur in the first and last of the preceding

inscriptions, when added to the usual term “Medicus Cohortis,”

apparently tend to indicate a different grade or rank of medical officer

from the latter.

Whether, however, or not there were different grades among the Roman

_Medici Cohortum_, we have sufficient evidence for proving that there

existed in the Roman army a higher rank of medical officer than

these,—namely, _Medici Legionum_. The Roman legion consisted of ten

cohorts.[402] We have seen that the individual cohorts of which the

legion was composed were each provided with a medical officer or

officers. I have already cited a law from Justinian’s Codex, showing

further that there were military physicians to the Roman legions. The

evidence of monumental tablets affords additional proof, that over the

whole legion, another, and in all probability a superior medical

officer, was placed. More than one monumental tablet has been

discovered, dedicated not to the _Medicus Cohortis_, but to the _Medicus

Legioni_. Thus Maffei, in his _Museum Veronense_, gives the inscription

of a tablet raised by Scribonia Faustina to the manes of her very dear

husband, L CÆLIUS ARRIANUS, physician to the Second Italian Legion, who

died at the age of forty-nine years and seven months. The inscription

in the original runs as follows:—

D M

L. CAELI ARRIANI

MEDICO LEGIONIS

II. ITALIC. QUI. VIX. ANN

XXXXVIIII. MENSIS VII

SCRIBONIA FAUSTINA

COIUGI KARISSIMO.[403]

In the _Collectio Inscriptionum_ (vol. i. No. 448) of Hugenbach and

Orelli, there is published another Roman tablet found in Switzerland (at

Gebistorf, near Windisch), bearing the name of a Legionary physician.

The inscription states that Atticus Patronus erected this tablet to

TITUS CLAUDIUS HYMNUS, physician to the twenty-first Legion, and to

Claudia Quieta, his wife.[404]

TI CLAVDIO HYMNO

MEDICO. LEG. XXI.

CLAVDIÆ QUIETÆ EIUS

ATTICUS. PATRONUS.

Orelli gives in the same work (vol. ii. No. 4996), another tablet found

at Salon, in which a third physician to a legion is named; the tablet

being erected by M. BESIUS TERTULLUS, physician of the eleventh Legion,

to the memory of his “hospes,” Papiria Pyrallis.

I have already alluded to a passage in Vegetius, showing in relation to

the government of the Roman medical staff, that the medical officers as

well as their patients were both placed under the control of the Præfect

of the Camp, to whose multifarious duties, these, among other matters,

pertained. “Praeterea aegri contubernales, et medici a quibus curantur,

expensae etiam ad ejus industriam pertinebant.”[405] Vegetius does not

allude to the existence of any special sick quarters; but a writer of

the second century, who lived under Trajan and Hadrian, Hyginus

Gromaticus, in his essay “De Castrametatione,”[406] in laying down the

proportions and measurements of the different parts of a Roman camp,

describes the proper situation in it for the Hospital or

“Valetudinarium.” This observation of Hyginus is interesting as far as

regards the probable date of the first institution of camp hospitals;

for we have no allusion to them in Polybius’ earlier account of the

different points and parts of a Roman camp of his day; and even in the

first century of our era, when Tacitus describes Germanicus as visiting

and encouraging the wounded soldiers under his command, he uses such an

expression, “circumire saucios” as to lead to the supposition, that the

invalids in the Roman camp were still, like the old Homeric heroes, laid

up in their own tents.[407] Indeed, Lampridius speaks of the Emperor

Alexander Severus in the third century, still visiting his sick soldiers

in their tents (aegrotantes ipse visitavit per tentoria milites).[408]

Let me add, that medical stores appear, as we might expect, to have been

carried with the imperial armies. At least in the war conducted by

Germanicus against Arminius, we are told by Tacitus, that in one of

their contests with the German army, the Roman troops lost their

intrenching tools, tents, and remedies or dressings for the wounded

(fomenta sauciis);[409] and subsequently we find Agrippina the wife of

the Roman general, distributing gratuitously among the soldiers, clothes

to the needy, and dressings to the wounded (militibusque, ut quis inops

aut saucius, vestem et fomenta dilargita est).[410] We have the

transport of the wounded sick sometimes spoken of; as, for example, when

Tempanius leads back his victorious troops from the Volscian war;[411]

but the only instance in which, as far as I remember, any special

description of ambulance is mentioned, occurs in Hirtius’

_Commentaries_, where he tells us that, after the battle fought near

Ruspina, Labienus ordered his wounded to be carried to Adrumentum, bound

in waggons (saucios suos jubet in plostris deligatos Adrumentum

deportari).[412] The passage should more probably read “plostris

decubitos.”

The remarks which I have hitherto made refer only to the medical staff

and organisation of the Roman army. If, however, as the preceding facts

tend to show, the Roman troops were furnished with a medical staff,

there is, _a priori_, every probability that the Roman fleet was

similarly provided. The contingencies, however, of a naval, as compared

with a military life, render the preservation of such monumental proofs

as we have already adduced in relation to the existence of army medical

officers much less likely in relation to the existence of medical

officers in the fleet. Indeed I am only aware of the discovery of one

ancient tablet referring to the naval medical service. In his late

splendid work on the Latin inscriptions found in the kingdom of Naples,

Mommsen has given a careful copy of the tablet in question.[413] The

inscription upon it was first, I believe, published by Marini.[414] The

tablet itself, which is now placed in the antiquarian collection at

Dresden, was originally discovered in the Elysian fields, near Baiæ; and

consequently in the vicinity of the famous _Pontus Julius_, and the

station of the imperial Misenian fleet. The inscription on the stone

bears that M. SATRIUS LONGINUS, physician to the three-banked ship or

trirem, the CUPID,[415] and those or the heirs of those freed by Julia

Venerias, his wife, erected the tablet to the manes of this deserving

lady.

D. M

IVLIÆ VENERIÆ.

M. SATRIUS LONGIN

MEDIC. DVPL. III. CVPID

ET. IVLIA VENERIA LIBER

HER. BEN. MER

FECER

In the preceding inscription LONGINUS is designated _Medicus

Duplicarius_; the term duplicarius in this as other inscriptions

signifying that, by the length or superiority of his service, he was

entitled to double pay and rewards. The “duplex stupendium” and “duplex

frumentum” is repeatedly alluded to by Varro, Livy, Virgil, and other

classical authors, as a military reward accorded to the more deserving

soldiers and officers of the army; and the corresponding adjective

“_duplicarius_” not unfrequently occurs in old Roman inscriptions.

In a previous page it has been stated that nowhere in the Roman

classics does there exist any distinct allusion to physicians or

surgeons as forming a regular part of the staff of the Roman army. There

are several references, however, in ancient medical and classical

authors to the fact of medical men being placed in professional

attendance upon Roman Senators,[416] Consuls,[417] and Emperors during

the course of their military campaigns. Thus Galen tells us that he

himself was summoned in this last capacity to attend upon the Emperors

M. Aurelius and L. Verus at Apuleia during their proposed campaign

against some of the German tribes.[418]

Various fragmentary notices exist regarding the physicians who attended

upon those Roman Emperors who visited Britain. A medical author (whom

Galen often quotes), Scribonius Largus, has left a valued therapeutical

work, _De Compositione Medicamentorum_. This work was written, as we are

informed in the preface to it, when the author was absent from Rome, and

deprived of the greater part of his library. In his _History of

Medicine_, Sprengel states, but I know not on what precise authority,

that the work in question was composed by Largus when he was absent with

the Emperor Claudius during his short campaign into England.[419] Our

countryman, Sir Thomas Browne, makes a similar statement. In his

_Hydriotaphia_, when discoursing on the want of Roman notices regarding

the state, habits, etc., of the ancient Britons, he observes, “We much

deplore the loss of that letter which Cicero expected or received from

his brother Quintus, as a resolution of British customs; or the accounts

which might have been made by Scribonius Largus, the physician

accompanying the Emperor Claudius, who might have discovered that frugal

bit of the old Britons (mentioned by Dion) which, in the bigness of a

bean, could satisfy their hunger.”[420]

We have already had occasion to allude to the disasters which attended

the Scottish campaign of Severus, and to the imperfect health of the

emperor himself during his invasion of Scotland. The evidence of

Herodian further shows us that during it he was attended by his own

physicians, and that their conduct after the emperor’s return from

Scotland to York, whilst in the highest degree commendable as regards

their faith and duty to the emperor, proved the cause of their own

downfall and destruction. The anxiety of Caracalla for the death of his

father Severus is well known. We have the testimony of Herodian to the

fact, that while the father and son were living at York, Caracalla at

one time attempted to destroy his father with his own hand. The same

historian further informs us, that the unhappy son attempted to induce

the medical attendants of Severus to adopt means to hasten the emperor’s

death.[421] He adds further, that in consequence of the court physicians

not complying with his unrighteous request, Caracalla, immediately after

the demise of Severus, commenced his reign of bloodshed and terror by

putting to death these recusant physicians of the late emperor.[422]

In the retrospect, it affords a strange subject of meditation for us in

the nineteenth century, to consider that, some fifteen hundred years

ago, it thus happened in England, that a number of physicians were

themselves doomed to death for refusing to pervert their professional

trust so far as to become the murderers of the royal invalid who had

confided his health to their care. And the modern physician may look

back with some degree of pride upon the fact, that in an age and at a

court where cruelty and corruption held unrestrained sway, some members

of the medical profession at least remained so uncorruptible as to

endanger and sacrifice their own lives rather than tamper with the life

of their patient.[423]

[Illustration:

Nº I

Fig. I

Fig. II

Fig. III

Nº II

Nº III

ROMAN MEDICINE STAMPS.]

ANCIENT ROMAN MEDICINE-STAMPS.

SECTION I.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON THE DISCOVERY, CHARACTERS, ETC., OF ROMAN

MEDICINE STAMPS.

About two hundred years ago there were found at Nymegen, in Holland, two

small, greenish, flat, square-shaped stones or tablets, each engraved on

its four lateral surfaces or edges with inscriptions, the letters of

which were cut incuse and retrograde. In his work on the Roman and other

antiquities of Nymegen,[424] Schmidt, one of the greatest archæologists

of his day, described these two stones; but he confessedly altogether

failed in interpreting their nature and uses, or in reading the legends

inscribed upon them.

A few years later, another distinguished Dutch antiquary, Spon of

Leyden, published an account of a third tablet, similar in character to

the two described by Schmidt;[425] and he suggested that they were

engraved stones, which the ancient pharmacopolists used as lids for

covering the jars or boxes in which their ointments, oils, or collyria

were kept.[426]

Subsequently, during the currency of the last century, Chishull,[427]

Caylus,[428] Walch,[429] Saxe,[430] and Gough,[431] published accounts

of various other stones, analogous in their character to the two first

discovered at Nymegen. And, through the labours and interpretations of

these and other authors, it came at last to be generally admitted among

antiquaries, that the nature of the legends upon the stones in

question,—the incuse and retrograde form of their inscriptions,—and

the localities in which they were found, all proved them to be

medicine-stamps, employed for the purpose of marking their drugs, by the

Roman doctors, who (some sixteen or seventeen centuries ago) practised

at the various stations throughout Europe, that were in those olden

times occupied by the colonists and soldiers of Rome. Latterly, since

the beginning of the present century, various additional examples of

similar Roman medicine-stamps have been discovered at different old

Roman towns and stations in France, Germany, etc., and described by

Tochon,[432] Sichel,[433] Duchalais,[434] Dufour,[435] and others.

These Roman medicine-stamps all agree in their general characters. They

usually consist of small quadrilateral or oblong pieces, of a greenish

schist and steatite, engraved on one or more of their edges or borders.

The inscriptions are in small capital Roman letters, cut retrograde and

intagliate (like the letters on modern seals and stamps), and

consequently reading on the stone itself from right to left, but making

an impression, when stamped upon wax or any other similar plastic

material, which reads from left to right. The inscriptions themselves

generally first contain (and that repeated on each side) the name of the

medical practitioner to whom the stamp pertained; then the name of some

special medicine, or medical formula; and, lastly, the disease or

diseases for which that medicine was prescribed. In a few instances, the

modes and frequency of using the medicine are added. In some instances,

the designation of the medicine, and of the disease for which it is

intended, are alone given. Perhaps still more frequently, when the

number of items is limited, the name of the medical practitioner only

appears, along with the name of some special medicinal preparation or

remedy prepared or sold by him. And sometimes the stamps present merely

the appellation of the medicine alone, without either the name of the

practitioner who vended it, or the name of the disease against which it

was supposed to be efficacious.

To this brief description one more curious fact remains to be

added,—namely, that in almost all, if not in all, the Roman

medicine-stamps hitherto discovered, the medicines inscribed upon them

are drugs for affections of the eye and its appendages; and the

diseases, when specified upon them, are always ophthalmic diseases.

Hence it may, with great probability, be concluded, that either these

stamps were used by oculists alone, or they were used by the general

medical practitioner in marking his eye-medicines only. On this account

some authors have not inaptly described them under the special

designation of Roman Ophthalmic or Oculist stamps.

The number of the stamps that have already been discovered amply proves

that ophthalmic diseases must have been extremely frequent in the sites

of the old Roman colonies spread throughout western Europe; and although

only three such oculist-stamps are as yet described as having been found

within the confines of Italy itself,[436] yet the frequent references to

individual oculists at Rome by Celsus, Galen, and others, and the

elaborate descriptions of eye-diseases left us by the various Greek and

Roman medical authors, who practised in the Eternal City during the time

of the empire, alike testify to the fact, that these diseases were also

sufficiently common in the Roman capital, and that many of the

fellow-citizens of Horace could probably personally apply the well-known

description which the poet gives of himself:—

Hic oculis ego nigra meis Collyria lippus

Illinere.

Galen, Celsus, Ætius, Paulus Ægineta, etc., all describe the different

diseases of the eye with care and minuteness; and the Roman

practitioners had evidently studied these affections, and their specific

distinctions, with no small degree of attention. In modern times medical

literature has been enriched with more complete and elaborate monographs

upon the diseases of the eye, than upon the diseases of any other single

organ of the body. But, perhaps, few of these monographs describe a

larger number of ophthalmic diseases than was professed to be known and

discriminated in those distant times when Galen wrote and practised.

This author, in the 16th chapter of his book, entitled _Introductio seu

Medicus_ enumerates and defines nosologically not less than one hundred

and twenty-four diseases to which the eye and its appendages are

liable.[437]

In the management of these diseases of the eye, the Roman practitioners

used, as we shall afterwards see, bleeding, antiphlogistics,

scarification, and other appropriate constitutional and local treatment.

But the practical part of their treatises, referring to ophthalmic

affections, is specially loaded with collyria—professedly of use in

almost every stage of every disease of the eye.[438] Galen speaks of

Asclepiades describing in his works a plentiful forest of collyria

(_collyriorum silva_).[439] In his book, _De Compositione Medicamentorum

secundum Locos_, Galen has himself left us formulæ for upwards of two

hundred of the ancient collyria. Ætius gives as great, if not a greater

number. The “Opus de Compositione Medicamentorum” of Myrepsus contains

recipes for eighty-seven ophthalmic collyria; and the works of

Scribonius Largus, Celsus, Actuarius, Oribasius, Alexander Trallianus,

Marcellus, Paulus Ægineta, etc., present us with abundance of formulæ

for the same class of preparations.

These collyria were composed of very various,[440] and in some instances

of very numerous, ingredients. But most of them which had attained any

great degree of reputation, seem (like the compound formulæ, or

prescriptions in our modern pharmacopœias), to have each passed under

a short specific name, by which they were no doubt readily and generally

recognised by the profession, and perhaps also by the public, in those

ancient times. The specific appellations of the individual collyria were

derived from different sources.

Some of them were known under the names of the oculists who invented or

employed them. Thus Galen gives recipes for the collyria of Asclepiades,

of Philoxenis, of Capiton, of Zoilus, of Cassius, of Sosandrus, of

Phaedrus, of Syneros, of Hermeius, of Erasistratus, of Marcus, of

Antonius Musa; the collyrium of Sergius, the Babylonian oculist; the

collyrium of Philip of Cæsarea; and many others.[441] Occasionally the

appellation under which the collyria were known was derived from some of

their more marked physical properties, as the “collyrium _Chloron_

appellatum,” from the green colour of the preparation; the _Cirrhon_,

from its yellowish tint; _Euchron_, from its agreeable hue (a colore

bono dictum); the collyrium _Cygnus_, from its white or swan-like

hue;[442] the _Aromaticum_, from its pleasant odour; and so forth. One

or other of the principal ingredients entering into its composition

seems to have given the name under which other collyria were known, as

the _Nardinum_, from its containing spikenard; the collyrium

_Diasmyrnes_ (δια, with, and σμυρνα, myrrh), from its

containing myrrh; the _Diarrhodon_, from its containing roses, etc.

Occasionally the collyrium seems to have derived its name and fame from

some great person whom it had been fortunate enough to benefit or to

cure. Thus, for example, Galen gives a recipe for the collyrium which

Phlorus used in the case of Antonia, the mother of Drusus; for the

“_collyrium Harmatium_,” which King Ptolemy used, etc. One was termed

_Achariston_, from its cheapness; and this collyrium repeatedly occurs

on the oculist-seals. Another was termed _Atimeton_, from its supposed

great value. But perhaps the most common mode of appellation was the use

of some recommendatory name, advertising the supposed high qualities of

the drug. Thus the old Greek and Roman authors give various species of

the collyrium _Monohemeron_,—so named from its being alleged to effect

a cure in a single day; others are designated the _Miraculum_, the

_Mysterium_, the Nectar collyrium (_Nectarium_); the Royal (_Collyrium

Basilicon_); the Royal Indian (_Collyrium Indicum Regale_); the

gold-like (_Isochryson_); the divine (_Isotheon_), etc. etc. And lastly,

a collyrium was often known under some high-sounding but unmeaning name,

such as the collyrium _Olympus_, _Proteus_, _Phœnix_, _Phyon_,

_Sphærion_, _Philadelphium_, etc. etc.

Under such designations the principal collyria of the Roman oculists

were known and used (like the one invented and boasted of by Galen) “per

omnes gentes quibus imperant Romani;” and it is under such special

appellations that we find these different collyria mentioned in the

inscriptions engraved upon the old oculist-stamps, which have been

turned up among the ruins of their ancient colonial stations.

Above sixty Roman oculist-stamps have now been discovered in different

parts of Western Europe, but particularly in Germany, France, and

Holland. Some time ago one was found about ten miles east of Edinburgh;

and it is principally with the view of describing this, and along with

it the other specimens that have been detected in the British Islands,

that I have ventured to draw up the present imperfect essay. I have been

the more induced to do so because this Scottish stamp is remarkable,

both as being found on almost the very frontier of the ancient Roman

empire, and as being one of the most perfect yet discovered. Besides, I

entertain a strong hope that such a publication as the present may

perhaps be fortunate enough to lead, through the zeal of some members of

the profession, to the detection in this country of additional examples

of these curious remains of our Roman medical predecessors.

In treating, in the following sections, of the individual Roman

medicine-stamps that have been found in Great Britain, I shall begin

with some account, first, of the specimen found at Tranent, and of two

other undescribed specimens contained in the British Museum. Afterwards

I shall notice the other similar stones or tablets that have been

hitherto brought to light in these islands, in an order chronologically

in reference to the dates at which they severally happened to be

rediscovered in those localities in which they had lain concealed and

buried for many a long century. And lastly, I shall attempt to offer

some general remarks upon the probable uses of the medicine-stamps; the

nature of the drugs and the character of the diseases mentioned upon

them; the names, status, and residences of their proprietors; and

various other correlative points.