and that in which it is considered at its commencement of doubtful character, in which the hair is not white, but the skin spot is white, though not deeper than the skin. Twenty-one days is the limited period for clearing up the doubt. For if, at the expiration of that time, the skin have acquired a dark hue, it is not leprosy, but merely scab (dry scall or psoriasis), while if the scab spread, it is decided to be a leprosy.

It is also esteemed a leprosy when the hair is white, the rising white, and within the rising is seen a raw or proud flesh. Here a distinction as to the police of the disease is drawn, evidently referring to the relative contagiousness of its varieties, for in the verses from the twelfth to the seventeenth of the same chapter, we are informed that though it be a leprosy, yet if the affected person be white from head to foot,

yet he is clean; at the same time this is qualified by its being said, if there be any raw flesh, then he is unclean.

In another place, the first described variety is referred to as being the sequence of peculiar causes, for we are told, if after a boil (furunculus) there be a white rising, or a bright spot white or somewhat "reddish," which on examination appears lower (deeper would have been a better translation) than the skin, and the hair be white, it is a leprosy broken out of the boil.

But if there be no white hairs, and if it be not "lower" than the skin, and sometimes dark, it is to be considered doubtful. If, however, after seven days it spread, it is a leprosy, but should it not spread it is a burning boil only.

Further on, peculiar localities for the leprosy are specified; for it is said a plague upon the head or beard, if it be deeper

than the skin, accompanied by a yellow hair, it is called a dry scall,—a leprosy.

And degrees of this are spoken of in a similar manner to the general leprosy of the skin; for, if it be not deeper than the skin, and the black hair be not involved, and it do not spread, and also after shaving the hair it do not spread, it is not unclean: whereas if it be of a slightly severer nature and spread, although the hair be not involved, yet it must be considered unclean. If it do not spread, and black hair grow out, then is it healed.

In concluding the enumeration of the leprosies, Moses points out the natural freckling of the skin and baldness of the hair, contrasting them with the diseased conditions by observing that they are clean; unless in the bald head or bald forehead there be a white, or red sore, when it is said to be a leprosy and unclean.

D

It is sufficiently evident, from the above analysis alone, that very different diseases are included under one name, causing a degree of confusion which is by no means cleared up by reference to the earlier writers.

The term Λέπρα being derived from λέπρος, thus necessarily having for its etymon λέπος, squama, should evidently refer solely to squamous diseases; but the term leprosy, as used above, according to our English translation includes diseases that are very different in their nature.

The writer () of the article Lepra, in the Cyclopedia of Medicine, observes that "at a very early period of medical literature, the confusion which afterwards became worse confounded," began to reign concerning lepra and leprosy.

(1) Dr. Houghton, physician to the Eastern Dispensary, Dublin.

But this confusion, however, is by no means to be discovered in the Mosaical account, if properly translated; for as Dr. Mason Good, in his exceedingly learned work, the Study of Medicine, very justly observes, the descriptions given by Moses, of the cutaneous efflorescences and disquamations, which were common among the Hebrew tribes, are admirable and exact.

We cannot look to any authority earlier than the Pentateuch to clear up any doubts, should they arise, as to whence the Hebrews first contracted these maladies, though there appears but little doubt that they received the infliction from the Egyptians : - yet Manetho confidently asserts that they were the importers of these maladies into that country; an inference which is certainly opposed to the general feeling of the ancient writers, who, with very few exceptions, name Egypt as the source. Hence we find