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.

    8/43 (page 6)
    applied the corresponding term of £)asiu7, Elephant disease, or Elephantiasis, to an affection entirely different, and one appa- rently unknown to the Greek physicians, namely, the tumid, Bar- badoes, 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 /uc/aw, or Jumni''' and Aljuzam.''''* 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 trans- lators of Avicenna, Rhazes, and other Arabic authors. These translators rendered the DasJU. 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 translat- ing 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 dis- ease, -f- By these unfortunate mistakes, medical men were betrayed in- to great confusion in the use of these several terms. An identity in names did not signify an identity in objects. The tumid leg, das Jil, or elephantiasis of the Arabians, is a disease perfectly dif- ferent from the tuberculous face affection or elephantiasis of the Greeks. Again, the term Lepra, as used by the Greek physicians them- selves, signifies morbid changes in the skin marked by the pre- sence 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, i\\Q Elephantiasis of the Greeks and the Lepra of the Arabians, or more properly of the Arabian translators, are expressions altogether synonymous as The disease is still designated in different parts of Asia and Africa by the same terms, more or less slightly changed. In his travels in Africa, Egypt, and Syria, (p. 332,) Browne speaks of elephantiasis under the local designation of dzndham\ Niebuhr says it is still named in Arabia and Persia dsjiiddain and Madsjiiddanu (Pinkcrton's Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. x. p. 170.) In Morocco it is called at the present day Jcddem and Miird Jcddcm.—(Jackson's Account of the Empire of Morocco.) f The remark in the text applies to nearly all the numerous Latin versions made from the Arabic. It is proper, however, to add, that the translator of the works of Haly Abbas has so far avoided the error alluded to, by translating the Juzam of hi' author by Elephanta. With this single exception, the error might otherwise, I believe be called universal.