Antiquarian notices of leprosy and leper hospitals in Scotland and England / by James Y. SImpson.

  • Simpson, James Young, 1811-1870.
Date:
[1841?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Antiquarian notices of leprosy and leper hospitals in Scotland and England / by James Y. SImpson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    27/43 (page 25)
    teristic 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 symp- toms—and hence identical in nature with the Continental dis- ease, and with the elepliantiasis 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 regu- lations enforced regarding it,—with its symptoms as they are acci- dentally described by Henryson in the sixteenth century, identi- cal 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 medi- cal evidence as could be adduced in regard to cutaneous affec- tions (the evidence, namely, of Drs Willan and Thomson) for asserting that the malady - as seen in the member-, 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 Elephaniiasis Grcpcorum. lr.prosy in the northern countries lying nearest to Shetland. On a former occasion I alluded to the existence of true Tubercu- lar 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 wliich leper hospitals also are still maintained in these localities, is, in reality, the Tu- bercular 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 of- fering 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 in- fected the inhabitants of Faroe had all the characters of tubercular c