Volume 2

Handbook of geographical and historical pathology / by August Hirsch ; translated from the second German edition by Charles Creighton.

  • Hirsch, August, 1817-1894.
Date:
1883-1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Handbook of geographical and historical pathology / by August Hirsch ; translated from the second German edition by Charles Creighton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    decline of tlie disease in Spain,1 where a few centres of it have main- tained themselves down to the present time. In France also its sub- sidence began then, although it was observed at various places in con- siderable diffusion in the seventeenth and even down to the end of the eighteenth century. Thus, Simonin2 states that leprosy was still common in Lorraine in the beginning of the seventeenth century; Briende,3 writing in 1787, says that it was still endemic in Upper Auvergne, especially in the district of Mont d’Or as far as the confines of Limousin, being known by the name of “ mal s. main and Rocliard4 points out that there were many lepers yet living at that time (1789) on the island of Bellc-Isle-en-mer, which had served as a refuge for leprous persons driven from the mainland, and that he had himself seen several at Rosaliere. The extinction of leprosy falls at a some- what later period in Switzerland, where numerous leper-houses were founded as late as the fifteenth century; later also in the countries of Northern Europe—in the Netherlands towards the middle of the seven- teenth century,5 in Germany, where the disease, according to many observers, continued to be somewhat widely prevalent in the sixteenth century, in Denmark0 and in England and Scotland, from which last we have a notice of numerous cases of leprosy in Kingcase in the year 1693. From the Shetland Isles, we have the following by Edmond- stone :8 “ The session records mention that a day of public thanks- giving was observed in the ministry in the year 1742, when this disease [leprosy] was almost extinguishedbut he had himself seen several cases there at the beginning of the present century. On the Faroe Islands leprosy has completely disappeared since the middle of the eighteenth century.9 For the history of leprosy in the countries of Nearer Asia our information goes no farther hack than the ninth and tenth centuries of the Christian era, the period from which date the writings of the so-called Arabian physicians Rhazes,10 Janus Damascenus,11 Ali Abbas,12 Avicenna13 and others, all I Morejon, 1. c. 2 * Reclierch. topogr. et med. sur Nancy,’ 1854, p. 306. 3 ‘ Histoire de la Soc. de med. de Paris,’ 1787, v, mem., p. 311. 4 ‘ Journ. gen. de med.,’ 1789, Ixxx, 365; Cabrol (‘Rec. de mem. de med. milit.,’1848, ii, serie vi, p. 51) makes the conjecture that the intractable skin diseases which are still met with on the island are the survivals of leprosy. 5 Israels, 1. c. 6 Danielssen et Boeck, 1. c., p. 136. 7 Simpson, 1. c., 1841, Oct., p. 328. 8 ‘ Edin. Med. and Surg. Journ.,’ 1810, Jan., p. 162. 9 Manicus, ‘ Bibl. for Laeger,’ 1824, i, 15. ‘ Liber ad Almansorem,’ v, cap. 32-35, Opp. Basil, 1544, p. 127. II ‘ Practlca>’ tract v, cup. 3, 5, 14, Lugd., 1525, pp. 48, 49, 51. 12 ‘ yisP- theor.,’ i, cap. 74, viii, cap. 15, 16, 18; ‘ Bract.,’ iv, cap. 3. 13 ‘Canon.,’ lib. iv, Fen. iii, tract, iii, cap. r, 2, 3, Fen. vii, tract, i, cap. 5.