Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Prize essays on leprosy / Newman, Ehlers, Impey. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.
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![alltud and in Law ccxiv. (p. 671) lepers are under no cir- cumstances to be invested with judicial function. Various old Welsh records may be found on the treat- ment of leprosy. In the c Book of Prescriptions of the Physicians of Myddvai/1 which was written, I believe, in the thirteenth century,2 directions are given for compounding medicines for leprosy, e. g. that of pounding together various vegetable roots with salted butter and heating this to the boiling-point, then strain through fine linen and add flour of brimstone. This was assured as a certain cure for leprosy (p. 401). Another prescription was for the juice of cleavers or goose-grass (p. 444). By the kind permission of Professor John Edward Lloyd of Bangor I may add here a note on the matter which I have received from him. Speaking of leprosy he says it was undoubtedly well known in Wales in the Middle Ages. The mediaeval name for it was clefri (clafr = a leper), the modern term gwahan-glwyf (= separation sickness) being a compound which we owe, I fancy, to the translators of the Welsh Bible. The evidence for its existence is— 1. The ancient Welsh Laws (referred to above). Ac- cording to these a person adjudged a leper retired to a lazar-house, ceased to be of the world, might be divorced by his wife, might not act as a judge or advocate, might not inherit patrimony (nor might any son of his born after his separation from the world), could not avenge or be avenged upon in any family feud, and could not be the subject of sarhad or legal insult. When he retired from the world he paid an ebediw, or death due, to the lord as in the case of a death. 2. The proverb Ni bydd adglaf o glafwr 3 (' glafwr ' is for f glafr/ which means leper, not leprosy) = You will find no convalescent leper. 1 ' The Physicians of Myddvai: Meddygon Myddfai,' by John Pughe, F.K.C.S., and J. W. Ab Ithel, M.A. 2 Professor J. E. Lloyd thinks the MSS. need not be older in substance than the sixteenth century. In the first passage the malady is called ' Tardd gwnhanol [i.e. separation = outbreak] a clwir, (which is called) y gwahan- glwyf.' In the second the word translated is different, viz. ' y ddarwyden fawr,' which is later on glossed ' a clwir yn Lladin lepra.' 3 1 Diareb' (Myv. Arch., iii, 166).](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21514410_0036.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
