effects are very offensive. I saw poor men and women with their fingers or legs literally wearing or wasting away:-forming a character directly opposite to what occurs in proper elephantiasis; where the limbs, though they continue to crack, continue to thicken enormously, even to the moment of separation.' Dr. Henderson, (') on the contrary, while describing the real elephantiasis in Iceland, calls it the Jewish. leprosy, and offers a sort of apology for Moses, on account of his not having noticed the very striking ancesthesia or insensibility of the skin:-the direct answer is, that Moses delineates a different disorder, and one in which no such symptom exists.

With regard to the police, instituted by Moses, on the occurrence of these disorders,

(1) Journal of a residence in Iceland.

there can be but one opinion as to its wisdom.

It appears evident, that the injunction against swine flesh was, in a great measure, referable to its use being a cause of these cutaneous disorders; for modern physicians have confirmed the statement of Manetho, that those who ate of it were infallibly afflicted with leprosy; and Michaelis says, that none can recover from any cutaneous disorders, unless they abstain from its use.

It was not only the Jews who abstained, but many others, who had no fear of infringing a divine law; as, for instance, according to Pliny, the Saracens and Arabians, and, according to other authors, the Egyptians and Phenicians; and Lafitu says, that such is the case with the South American nations.

Baron Larrey ascribes the attacks of lepra, which the French suffered in Egypt,

to the unwholesome character of the pork in that country; for all those who lived upon pork for some time were attacked by a leprous eruption. (')

Upon the authority of Dr. Mead, we are informed, that under the impression that these diseases were common amongst the earlier Egyptians, some authors, who were not well disposed towards the Jews, have jeeringly asserted, after speaking of the ill effects of swine's flesh, that these animals were driven from Egypt, "nimirum ne scabies et vitiligo morbus illis (the Egyptians) communis lepraque dictus ad pluris," into Judæa, that the inhabitants might reap the advantage.

I have my doubts, whether we are to consider the "leprosy," mentioned in the verses from the twenty-ninth to the thirty

(1) Relation Chirurgicale de l'armie d'orient.

eighth, as identical with any of the varieties of the disease just described; for we have seen that the ordinary effect of those varieties is to involve the surface generally, which we may justly infer, from the restricted wording of these verses, not to be the case in the present instance: it certainly happens that in advanced leprosies the hairy scalp and beard are often affected, and when it would be difficult to distinguish them from the pustular diseases to which, I am inclined to attribute, they refer; but their history affords us no reason for supposing that the head or beard is a primary seat of the affection, as should be the case, were we to assume that these verses related to it.

To refer to the text:-"If a man or a woman have a plague upon the head or the beard, then the priest shall see the plague, and behold, if it be in sight deeper than

the skin, and there be in it a yellow thin hair, (') then the priest shall pronounce him unclean it is a dry scall, even a leprosy upon the head or beard."

In continuation, Moses tells us, that if it be not deeper than the skin, and the black hair be not involved, and it does not spread, and after shaving the hair it does not spread, it is not unclean; but if it spread, though the hair be not involved, it is unclean. If it do not spread, and black hair grow out, it is healed.

It may appear at first sight, that the original text is so sufficiently crude and incomplete, as to render our recognising the disease a matter of uncertainty.

But if

(1) Capillus flavus, solitoque subtilior. Vulg.-Geddes

thinks this should be rendered a 66

yellowish hair," and not

a yellow thin hair." Our version is followed by Bate and Purver.

F