Diseases of the Bible / by Risdon Bennett.

  • James Risdon Bennett
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Diseases of the Bible / by Risdon Bennett. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

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    of these does Celsus attribute any contagious property, though he does call them foul [focdd). And he dis- tinctly states that they are not dangerous, which could certainly not be said of elephantiasis or modern leprosy.^ In what then does the distinction between clean and unclean consist, on which the Levitical laws were based ? If we suppose that uncleanness ever implied contagious- ness, which, in many cases, we are sure that it did not, the only conclusion to which we can come with any con- fidence is, that in certain kinds of H^]^ there was a contagious element, perhaps unknown to the writer, which might be some form of epiphyte, or an acarus, as in the case of the itch. Such a complication of an otherwise non-contagious disease would, of course, call for sanitary regulations, and render necessary the seclusion of the affected. But, if apart from such con- siderations any of the species described were in their nature infectious or contagious, we are ignorant of any analogous diseases, either ancient or modern. Nor is there evidence that any of the species presented, apart from the cutaneous signs, any of the essential characters of such a disease as elephantiasis. There is nowhere any mention or even hint of the characteristic anaesthesia, or loss of sensation, indicating nerve disease, although the examination of the local signs by the priest was evidently of the most careful ' Celsus, De Medicina, lib. v. cap. 28, sect. 19: ' De vililiginis speciebus, id est, de alpho et melane et leuke,' i. e. the different species of what is called now psoriasis, and of which he says, ' quamvis per se nullum peri- culum adfert, tamen et foeda est.' It is observable that elephantiasis is not treated of in this bouk v, comprising cutaneous diseases, but in his third book, cap. 25, along with such diseases as jaundice and apoplexy. ViliLigo is the term used also by Arnobius (fourth century) to denote the Greek Ki-npa {Adv. GenUs, lib. i. p. 337, ed. Paris, 1836).