Elephantiasis graecorum, or true leprosy / by Robert Liveing.

  • Liveing, Robert, 1834-1919.
Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Elephantiasis graecorum, or true leprosy / by Robert Liveing. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    cent IV., and the Lazarites gradually ceased to fulfil the functions for which they were originally cele- brated. St. Louis brought twelve of these knights into France for the express purpose of instructing others in the management of the leper hospitals of that kingdom. The introduction of leprosy into Western Europe has often been attributed to the Crusades; the dis- ease, however, was known in Spain, Germany, France, and even England, long before that time. Both Pepin and Charles the Great made laws regarding it, and the former in 757 (at Compiegne) enacted that the appearance of the malady in either husband or wife was a sufficient cause for divorce. In Ger- many we have good reason to believe that it pre- vailed as early as the fifth century. A leper house was founded in the eighth century, by Abbot Othmar, at St. Gallen, near the Lake of Constance. In England several leper houses were founded before the first Crusade, in the reign of William the Conqueror; two of which were in the neighbourhood of Canterbury, and one in Northampton. And a century later leprosy was becoming very prevalent, as may be inferred from some of the regulations which are mentioned by Stow. He says : c It is to be observed that leprous persons were always, for avoiding the danger of infection, to be separated from the sound, God Himself commanding to put out of the host every leper, &c. Whereupon I read