(5) Leprosy of Houses and Clothes. With respect to the leprosy of houses and of clothes (Lev. xiv :55), the expression is only analogical, referring to the spots and disfigurations which appeared upon the walls and articles of clothing, resembling the leprous spots, and originating from a species of mold or mildew, indicating a great degree of dampness, corrupting the air, injurious to health, and often the occasion and precursor of fatal diseases. The rites ordained for cleans ing and purifying this kind of "leprosy" are in their symbolical bearing strictly analogous to the laws concerning leprosy proper (Lev. xiii ; xiv :33-53).
3. Elephantiasis. lt may be useful here to subjoin a description of elephantiasis, or the leprosy of the middle ages, as this is the disease from which most of the prevalent notions con cerning leprosy have been derived, and to which the notices of lepers contained in modern books of travels exclusively refer.
(1) Symptoms and Effects. Elephantiasis first of all makes its appearance by spots of a reddish, yellowish, or livid hue, irregularly dis seminated over the skin and slightly raised above its surface. These spots are glossy, and appear oily, or as if they were covered with varnish. After they have remained in this way for a longer or shorter time, they are succeeded by an erup tion of tubercles. These are soft, roundish tu mors, varying in size from that of a pea to that of an olive, and are of a reddish or livid color. They are principally developed on the face and ears, but in the course of years extend over the whole body. The face becomes frightfully de formed; the forehead is traversed by deep lines and covered with numerous tubercles; the eye brows become bald, swelled, furrowed by oblique lines, and covered with nipple-like elevations ; the eyelashes fall out, and the eyes assume a fixed and staring look; the lips are enormously thick ened and shining; the beard falls out ; the chin and ears are enlarged and beset with tubercles; the lobe and aim of the 110SC are frightfully en larged and deformed; the nostrils irregularly di lated, internally constricted, and excoriated; the voice is hoarse and nasal, and the breath intoler ably fetid. After some time, generally after some years, many of the tubercles ulcerate, and the matter which exudes from them dries to crusts of a brownish or blackish color ; but this process sel dom terminates in cicatrization. The extremities are affected in the same way as the face. The hollow of the foot is swelled out, so that the sole becomes flat ; the sensibility of the skin is greatly impaired, and, in the hands and feet, often entirely lost; the joints of the toes ulcerate and fall off one after the other ; insupportable fcetor exhales from the whole body. The patient's general health
is not affected for a considerable time, and his sufferings are not always of the same intensity as his external deformity. Often, however, his nights are sleepless or disturbed by frightful dreams ; lie becomes morose and melancholy ; he shuns the sight of the healthy, because he feels what an object of disgust he is to them, and life becomes a loathsome burden to him; or he falls into a state of apathy, and after many years of such an existence he sinks either from ex haustion, or from the supervention of internal dis ease. The Greeks gave the name of elephantiasis this disease, because the skin of the person affected with it was thought to resemblethat of an elephant, in dark color, ruggedness, and insensi bility, or, as some have thought, because the foot. after the loss of the toes, when the hollow of the sole is filled up and the ankle enlarged, resembles the foot of an elephant.
(2) Contagious or Hereditary. About the period of the Crusades elephantiasis spread it self like an epidemic over all Europe, even as far north as the Faroe Islands, and henceforth, owing to the above-named mistakes, every one becatne familiar with leprosy under the form of the terrible disease that has just been described. Leper or lazar houses abounded everywhere ; as many as 2,000 are said to have existed in France alone. The disease was considered to be con tagious possibly only on account of the belief that was entertained respecting its identity with Jew ish leprosy, and the strictest regulations were en acted for secluding the diseased from society. Towards the commencement of the seventeenth century the disease gradually disappeared from Europe, and is now confined to intertropical coun tries. It existed in Faroe as late as 1676, and in the Shetland Islands in 1736, long after it had ceased in the southern parts of Great Britain. The best authors of the present day who have had an opportunity of observing the disease do not consider it to be contagious. There seems, how ever, to be little doubt as to its being hereditary. (Good's Study of 421; Rayer, Nal. de hi Peau, ii, 296; Simpson On the Lepers and Leper Houses of Scotland and England.) W. A. N.