Leprosy

Use in the book

Leprosy first helps define the writer's relation to his reader. Burton compares his desire to help from experience with the woman who, herself a leper, devoted her inheritance to a hospital for lepers. The analogy concerns fellow-feeling and the dedication of one's resources: her property becomes his time and knowledge. It does not imply that Burton has leprosy or that the two illnesses are identical. Camden's account supplies the literary example, but the edition distinguishes locating that account from independently verifying the foundation story.

The humoral account gives the disease a causal position. The same melancholy material is said to produce different effects according to its location and condition: jaundice if retained without putrefaction, quartan fever if putrefied, leprosy if it breaks out onto the skin, and mental derangement if it disturbs the mind. In the prognostics, this outward movement can be interpreted as favourable for the inward disorder. Rhazes is cited for resolution when melancholy comes to the surface, and Guianerius adds leprosy among “good signes.” A favourable sign is therefore relative to the illness whose prognosis is under discussion; Burton is not calling leprosy intrinsically beneficial. The paragraph itself also disputes whether quartan fever cures melancholy or causes it, exposing the instability of apparently straightforward disease transitions.

A different explanatory scheme appears when Burton enumerates supernatural causes. Gehazi's leprosy is a scriptural instance of affliction interpreted as punishment, following the explicit theological proposition that God causes disease to punish sin. Naaman's leprosy later serves another purpose: his costly journey to seek a cure illustrates a patient's willingness to spend, immediately after the warning not to endanger health through miserliness. Biblical disease thus supports two different arguments, one about divine agency and another about the value placed on recovery. Neither passage supplies a present-day diagnostic description.

Inheritance and nursing bring the disease-name into accounts of reproduction and social control. Mercado's list labels the Gaibots of Gascony “hereditary Lepers”; the editor expressly identifies that as a stigmatising historical description, not an established diagnosis of the community. The following Latin discussion reports Jewish objections to Christian sexual conduct through the Christian writers Burton cites. Its “leprosi” belongs to that mediated polemic, not an unmediated statement of Jewish practice or a verified causal explanation. Later, leprosy joins the diseases supposedly imprinted through a nurse's milk, within an argument that also transmits character and bodily shape. These are related attempts to explain continuity between generations, but the proposed routes and the kinds of evidence differ.

The Scottish example requires its immediate qualification. Burton reports Boece's account of castration, exclusion from sexual company and killing, directed at people said to have transmissible diseases including leprosy. He next calls the judgement severe and unfit for Christians, while nevertheless advocating greater control over marriage. Omitting either movement would falsify the passage: the rejection of those particular punishments does not amount to a rejection of coercive reproductive thinking. The editor also notes that the report has been located in Boece, not proved as Scottish law.

Classification and therapeutic praise enlarge the name in other ways. Paracelsus's leprosy is one of four principal heads, taking in ulcers, itching disorders, scaly eruptions and scabs. Burton immediately rejects as too general the associated claim that curing a principal class cures everything beneath it. The praises of medicinal wine and of black hellebore's extract later include leprosy in much broader catalogues of claimed effects; the wine testimony is Villanovanus's, not Burton's own observation. These passages show the scope claimed for a classification or remedy, not demonstrated efficacy.

Finally, the label can organise other people's reactions. “Leprosies” appears among conditions said to prevent or disturb company, in a list that mixes contagion with frightening or repellent appearance. In the proposed campaign against erotic attachment, “he is a leper” is something to allege about the beloved. Its function is to produce aversion, not to report an examination or verified illness. The charitable identification of the opening example and the later uses of disease as social stigma belong to the same work, but should not be reconciled into one uniform attitude.

Related entries

Hospital explains the charitable institution in the opening analogy; Parents and children and Custom and education continue the reproduction and nursing arguments. Prognostics explains a “good sign” relative to an illness's course. Contagion and infection and Pox and morbus Gallicus help separate transmissibility, disease naming and stigma. Disease and sickness treats the contested fourfold classification.

Explained vocabulary: Additional Terms.

Places to read

1. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraph 12; note 170A hospital founder as the model of compassionate authorship; marginal disease terminology in the accompanying note.
2. Subsection 3. The Material of Melancholy · paragraph 40Context: differing effects attributed to hot and cold humours.
3. Subsection 3. The Material of Melancholy · paragraph 41Context: the variable melancholy substance.
4. Subsection 3. The Material of Melancholy · paragraph 42Leprosy as a supposed skinward effect of melancholy matter.
5. Section 2 Member 1 Subsection 1 Causes of Melancholy God as a Cause · paragraph 5Context: the theological account of disease as punishment.
6. Section 2 Member 1 Subsection 1 Causes of Melancholy God as a Cause · paragraph 6Gehazi’s affliction as a scriptural example.
7. Subsection 6. Parents as a Cause Through Inheritance · paragraph 44“Hereditary Lepers” as a historical label applied to a community.
8. Subsection 6. Parents as a Cause Through Inheritance · paragraph 7Latin leprosi in a mediated religious and reproductive polemic.
9. Subsection 6. Parents as a Cause Through Inheritance · paragraph 21Context: historical accounts of killing disabled children.
10. Subsection 6. Parents as a Cause Through Inheritance · paragraph 22Boece’s reported coercive measures against supposed hereditary disease.
11. Subsection 6. Parents as a Cause Through Inheritance · paragraph 23Context: Burton rejects the stated punishment for Christians but urges greater control.
12. Subsection 6. Parents as a Cause Through Inheritance · paragraph 24Context: wealth and birth criticised as the sole grounds for permitting marriage.
13. Member 4 Subsection 1 Non-Necessary, Remote, External, Adventitious or Accidental Causes: First, the Nurse · paragraph 28Leprosy in the claim that milk imprints constitution and disease.
14. Section 4 Member 1 Prognosis of Melancholy · paragraph 8Skinward disease as a favourable prognostic sign within humoral theory.
15. Subsection 2. Concerning the Patient · paragraph 19Context: the patient warned against excessive thrift.
16. Subsection 2. Concerning the Patient · paragraph 20Naaman’s expenditure in seeking a cure.
17. Subsection 3. Concerning Medicine · paragraph 6Leprosy as a broad principal class of diseases.
18. Subsection 3. Concerning Medicine · paragraph 7Context: Burton disputes the sweeping inference from classification to cure.
19. Member 8 Against Melancholy Itself · paragraph 26Leprosy in a list combining appearance, contagion and difficulty of company.
20. Subsection 5 Compound Alteratives Criticism of Compounds and Mixed Medicines · paragraph 20Context: the medicinal wine being praised.
21. Subsection 5 Compound Alteratives Criticism of Compounds and Mixed Medicines · paragraph 21Leprosy among the wine’s attributed effects.
22. Subsection 5 Compound Alteratives Criticism of Compounds and Mixed Medicines · paragraph 22Context: the first-person witness belongs to the quoted authority.
23. Subsection 2 Single Substances That Purge Melancholy Downwards · paragraph 31Context: the plant in the ensuing claim is black hellebore.
24. Subsection 2 Single Substances That Purge Melancholy Downwards · paragraph 33Leprosy in Paracelsus’s praise of the extract.
25. Resist the Beginnings, Avoid Occasions, Change One’s Location; Fair and Foul Means, Contrary Passions and Ingenious Devices; Introduce Another Love and Disparage the Former · paragraph 51Context: the instruction to discredit a beloved through allegations.
26. Resist the Beginnings, Avoid Occasions, Change One’s Location; Fair and Foul Means, Contrary Passions and Ingenious Devices; Introduce Another Love and Disparage the Former · paragraph 52“He is a leper” within the proposed accusations.

In this edition

The modern text sometimes replaces the person-label with “people with leprosy,” as in the opening hospital example, and turns “he is a leper” into the disease-noun “leprosy” within the list of alleged infirmities. In the Gaibots passage it retains “hereditary lepers,” allowing the editor's explicit qualification to address the historical label rather than concealing it. Latin “leprosi” is rendered within a phrase about frequent leprosy; that is a natural English restructuring, not a claim that the Latin adjective itself means “frequent.”

The opening marginal “elephantiasi” and “elephantiasis” are translated according to Burton's own English “leper” and “Lepers.” Their presence is important for retrieval, but this edition does not use them to assign the woman a different modern disease. The accompanying explanation identifies the literary source while leaving the historical foundation story unverified.

Leprosie

A historical disease said here to result when melancholy matter breaks out onto the skin.

Original wording: “if it break out to the skin, Leprosie”

Modern wording: “If it breaks out onto the skin, it causes leprosy”

The conditional places the disease in a humoral causal sequence. It does not establish that the several illnesses listed have one modern pathological cause.

Editorial access forms: leprosy; leprosie. These are lookup aids, not additional claims of printed attestation.

leper; Lepers

A person, or people, described as having leprosy.

Original wording: “being a leper her self, bestow all her portion to build an Hospital for Lepers”

Modern wording: “herself suffering from leprosy, devoted her whole inheritance to building a hospital for people with leprosy”

The modern edition gives person-centred phrases for both singular and plural. In this example the shared affliction motivates charitable fellowship, unlike the later use of the label as an accusation.

Editorial access forms: lepers; person with leprosy. These are lookup aids, not additional claims of printed attestation.

Further checked attestations: the passage: “he is a leper”.

hereditary Lepers

A stigmatising description of a community as inheriting leprosy.

Original wording: “those Gaibots in Gascony, hereditary Lepers”

Modern wording: “those Gaibots in Gascony, hereditary lepers”

The phrase forms part of Burton’s historical account of inherited disease. The editor retains the printed community-name but explicitly withholds endorsement of the label as a diagnosis.

Editorial access forms: Gaibots; hereditary leprosy. These are lookup aids, not additional claims of printed attestation.

leprosi

Leprous or afflicted with leprosy, said of persons in the reported Latin polemic.

Original wording: “Christiani toties leprosi”

Modern wording: “Christians’ frequent leprosy”

Christiani names the people, leprosi predicates the disease of them, and toties supplies the repeated-frequency element. The modern noun phrase rearranges that structure. Burton’s report is mediated through Christian authorities, not direct evidence of Jewish medical or religious opinion.

Editorial access forms: leprous; leprosus (dictionary headword). These are lookup aids, not additional claims of printed attestation.

Leprosy (principal head)

A broad disease class embracing several sorts of skin disorder in the reported Paracelsian scheme.

Original wording: “those are Leprosy, Gout, Dropsie, Falling-sickness”

Modern wording: “These classes are leprosy, gout, dropsy and epilepsy”

The next sentence places ulcers, itching disorders, scaly eruptions and scabs under leprosy. This taxonomic breadth is not the same as a single modern diagnosis, and Burton disputes the inference that one cure serves every subordinate disease.

Editorial access forms: principal leprosy class. These are lookup aids, not additional claims of printed attestation.

leprosies

The plural disease-name in a catalogue of conditions said to impede company.

Original wording: “plagues, apoplexies, leprosies”

Modern wording: “plague, apoplexy, leprosy”

The modern column uses a collective singular. The local grouping mixes appearance and effects on observers with contagion, so membership does not independently establish infectiousness.

Editorial access forms: leprosies plural. These are lookup aids, not additional claims of printed attestation.

elephantiasi; elephantiasis

Leprosy in Camden’s Latin example, translated according to Burton’s accompanying English.

Original wording: “Ipsa elephantiasi correpta elephantiasis hospitium construxit.”

Modern wording: “herself afflicted with leprosy, she built a house for people with leprosy”

This is Burton’s marginal Latin, not the English body. Elephantiasi follows the participle for being afflicted; the later elephantiasis belongs to the hospital phrase as the edition translates it. The explanation follows the supplied note and makes no independent modern diagnostic identification.

Editorial access forms: elephantiasis (historical disease-name); elephantiasis hospital. These are lookup aids, not additional claims of printed attestation.