Leprosy and hereditary disease

Meaning

II.3.8 describes disease and corruption as entering through inherited seed and subsequent nourishment. Leprosy appears as an example within that account of transmission. The passage also gives the bodily history a moral-religious setting through Satan's predatory activity and the degeneration of human life.

These are historical explanatory claims, not modern statements about the causes or inheritance of a disease. The author allows medicines to check some effects while arguing that more fundamental purification is required. The entry should therefore keep inherited corruption, acquired dietary impurity and spiritual temptation distinct rather than presenting them as one medically established mechanism or a moral judgement upon people with illness.