Prize essays on leprosy / [By] Newman, Ehlers, Impey [Thompson, Cantlie].

  • New Sydenham Society.
Date:
1895-97
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Prize essays on leprosy / [By] Newman, Ehlers, Impey [Thompson, Cantlie]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    The first return of any Crusaders cannot have been before 1098, for they only left in 1095 ; yet there were at least three famous leper-houses before that date—Canterbury, Northampton, and Chatham,—and Hugh, Bishop of London, and other noteworthy people of the time, had died of leprosy. (Besides earlier records of the disease, for which see the chronology in the Appendix.) From the establishment of the leper house at Canterbury, before 1089, up till the end of the fifteenth century, British history has many like establishments to record.1 The disease was present in Scotland from the time of Stephen till the commencement of the seventeenth century, and in Ireland from the fifth to the eighteenth. With these preliminary remarks I will take some of the chief leper-houses, and outline something of their history. The first of which we have much record is Canterbury. Somner2 states that leprosy became a national malady, and accordingly in all parts provision was made for the receipt and relief of the infected persons. There are, he says, three houses at Canterbury—St. James's, St. Laurence's, and Herbal. Other historians give St. James's, St. Nicholas', and St. Laurence's, and others only two. There can be no doubt that Lanfranc, then Archbishop of Canterbury, founded a hospital here before 1089,3 and it is recorded that previously to this Becket performed miracles, giving health to the leprous.* Northampton5 and Chatham6 were established very shortly thereafter, both in the eleventh century and probably both iu the reign of William II. The latter was founded in 1078, on the south side of what is now the High Street, by the celebrated Bishop Gundulph, for the recep- tion of lepers of both sexes. The endowments were small, and though they were afterwards augmented by different benefactors, the proceeds were seldom sufficient to sup- port the inmates, who were hence accustomed to be supplied 1 See the accompanying list of leper-houses, dates, &c. 5 Somner, 'Antiquities of Canterbury,' p. 80. 3 Simpson, loc. cit. ; Somner, 'Antiquities of Canterbury.' 4 Matthew Paris. 6 Brigges, ' History of Northampton.' 6 Tanner, ' Notitia Monastica,' 1744, p. 211.