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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    short, the dread of infection led people into many absurd practices, some of which were continued down to the seventeenth century. Evelyn, in his diary, mentions that while on a journey to the Hague, in the summer of 1641, he 'observed divers leprous poor creatures, dwelling in solitary huts on the brink of the water, and permitted to ask the charity of the passengers, which is conveyed to them in a floating box that they cast out.' I have dwelt somewhat at length on the belief that existed in the Middle Ages in the infectious character of leprosy, because it was at the root of all the laws and regulations affecting lepers, and also because it explains why, for many centuries, they were so carefully shunned by all except those who desired to perform some signal act of penance or piety. Matthew Paris (quoted by Sir J. Simpson) gives us an excellent example of the way in which lepers were occasionally utilised for the latter reli- gious purpose. Speaking of Matilda, the queen of Henry I. of England, he says : ' At the same time (in the year 1105) 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 invitation to her chamber, he found the house filled with lepers, 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,