Antiquarian notices of leprosy and leper hospitals in Scotland and England.

  • 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. 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.

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    ANTIQUARIAN NOTICES OP LEPROSY AND LEPER HOSPITALS IN SCOTLAND AND ENGLAND. Part I, By JAMES Y. SIMPSON, M. D., F. R. C. P., Professor of Midwifery in the University of Edinburgh. [Read before the Medico-Chirurgical Society of Edinburgh, 3d March 1841.] CFrom the Edin. Med. and Surg. Journal, No. 149.^ Few subjects in pathology are iTiore curious, and at the same lime more obscure, than the changes which, in the course of ages, have taken phice in the diseases incident either to the human race at large, or to particular divisions and communities of it. A great proportion of the maladies to which mankind are liable have, it is true, remained entirely unaltered in their cliaracter and consequences from the earliest periods of medical history down to the present day. Synocha, Gout, and Epilepsy, for instance, show the same symptoms and course now, as the writings of Hippo- crates describe them to have presented to him upwards of 2000 years ago. The generatio de novo of a really new species of dis- ease, is (says Dr Mason Good*) perhaps as much a phenomenon as a really new species of plant or of animal. Dr Good''s remark is probably too sweeping in its principle ; for, if necessary, it might be easy to show that, if the particular diseases of particular animal species are liable to alteration at all, they must necessarily alter more frequently than those animal species themselves. In pur- suing such an inquiry, the pathologist labours under comparative * Study of Medicine, Vol. i. Pref. p. xxiii. C A