Part 5

It is trusted that the fact has been established that the Leprosy of the Bible, and of the Middle Ages, were entirely different diseases. The only essential characteristics in common being that both were cutaneous and neither was contagious, excepting by innoculation by a wound or a cut. Both were possibly hereditary, though this is denied by some.

The Biblical Leprosy never ended in death, whereas that of the Middle Ages always did. In one case there was little suffering, in the other usually a great deal.

In one the isolation was temporary only, in the other permanent.

The origin of the Mediæval Scourge is enshrouded in impenetrable mystery. The cure is as enigmatical.

The late Father Damian, who gave his life to ministration and alleviation of the sufferings of the 2,000 Lepers of Hawaii, in the island of Molakai, no doubt caught the disease of which he died, owing to the fact, that Lepers only handled and cooked the food, kneaded and baked the bread, washed the clothes, etc. The whole surroundings being Leprous, it is difficult to see how the good Father could well have avoided contamination. Still, the disease is not contagious if reasonable precautions are taken.

Two remarkable meetings were held in London in 1889, under the presidency of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. At the first one, held in Marlborough House, June 17th, the Prince of Wales made the startling and unwelcome announcement of the case of Edward Yoxall, aged 64, who was carrying on his trade as butcher, in the Metropolitan Meat Market, from whence he was subsequently removed.

At the second meeting held in the rooms of the Medical Society, Chandos Street, Cavendish Square, two Lepers were exhibited. The verdict of the medical men present was, "There is no curative treatment of Leprosy." Dr. Thornton, of the Leper Hospital of Madras, said:--That his experience showed him that Leprosy was contagious, and that it was likely to spread to this country; that the disease, however, could rarely, if ever, be communicated, except in the case of a healthy person by an abraded skin, coming in contact with a Leper. "The sufferings of the afflicted can be alleviated by (1) a liberal diet; (2) oleaginous anointings, by which the loss of sleep, one of the most distressing symptoms of the disease, can be prevented."

The Rev. Father Ignatius Grant called my attention to the use of "simples" in England, as elsewhere, for the alleviation of the suffering. He says, "Les Capitulaires, Legislatio domestica, of Charlemagne, contains the enumeration of the sorts of fruit trees and plants to be grown in the Imperial gardens, as a guide to monastic establishments throughout his empire. The list is entirely of culinary and medicinal herbs, simples and vegetables. As to flowers, only the lily and the rose are permitted for agrément; whilst all the rest are for food or medicinal remedies. All the common simples are specified.

"Herein is a mine of information, which I only allude to, but it was doubtless the plan followed by most religious houses. For one thing is clear, that as the monastic gardens were all arranged on a certain and utilitarian method, there is an antecedent probability of a consequent fact. That fact is, that we shall find out if we examine the purlieus of our own ruined abbeys, many a plant medicinal or culinary which has reset itself and persisted in its original locale for four centuries, though its original native earth and climate was not that of England.

"Such herbs proper for making salves and lotions are plentifully mentioned in part i. 301-455 of Ducange, v. areola florarium, lilietum, &c., and there is a catalogue of des plus excellentes fruits qui se cultivent chez les Chartreux (Paris, 1752.) Also, as a specimen of this sort of "find," the Woolhope Natural Club found the valuable medicinal plant asarabica (asarum Europeum) in the forest of Deerfold, having wandered from the old abbey garden, and perpetuated itself for ages. This one instance shows how the old gardeners had introduced foreign plants into their wort-beds.

"Many writers have told me, he goes on to observe, but especially a Franciscan Father of the Holy Land and two Franciscan Sisters from a hospital at Vialas (Lazére) par Génalhac, that--

"1. They use elm bark for cutaneous eruptions, herpes, and lepra. Four ounces of the bark boiled in decoction in two quarts of water down to one quart. That half a pint given twice a day has made inveterate eruptions of lepra, both dry and humid, to disappear.

"2. The rose burdock--lappa rosea--they give in cases of lepra icthyosis, and it has succeeded where other remedies had failed.

"3. They have used also the root of the mulberry-tree. Half a dram of the powder to a dose.

"4. Lapathum bononicense, or fiddle-dock, and also the dwarf trefoil--trefolium pusillum.

"The following is the list of simples which I obtained from the Lazar-house still existing in Provence, les Alpes Maritimes, and from that in Cyprus, and especially Nicosia, as also from the well-known Leper hospital in Provence:

"Food, baths, and oleaginous applications stand first. Then some preparation of the following ordinary simples, which were most known among our own common people, and which are still used in various parts of England by simple folk for skin diseases and sores. You will see how they entered into the monastic pharmacopoeia of the middle ages, how they were at their doors, and especially cultivated in monastery gardens.

"1. Plantain--plantago major. Qualities: alterative, diuretic, antiseptic. For scrofulous and cutaneous affections. It has also the property of destroying living microscopical matter in or on the human body. The Negro Casta, who discovered this herb, afterwards, as a remedy against the deadly bite of the rattlesnake, received a considerable reward from the Assembly of South Carolina. It is a native of most parts of Europe and Asia, as also of Japan. Plantain stands in the forefront of all the cartels des hospitalières.

"2. Yellow dock--rumex. Alterative, tonic, astringent, detergent, and anti-scorbutic. Employed in scrofula, Leprosy, cutaneous diseases, and purigo, and that with much effect.

"3. Sorrel--rumex ascetocella. Employed locally to cancers, tumours, and the open wounds of the Leper.

"4. Burdock--arctenus lappa. Aperient, sudorific, and diuretic. Employed in venereal and Leprous disorders, scrofula, and scurvy. Fluid extract of lappa is exhibited even now to lepers. Dose, 1/2 to 1 dram.

"5. Monk's rhubarb--rumex alpinus. Used for the same purposes as true rhubarb.

"6. Lily roots. This ancient remedy is in all the books to which the Franciscan Fathers of the Holy Land have access, and comes down from Pliny and Dioscorides. "Effugant lepras lilium radices." (Plin.)

"7. Common wormwood--absinthium vulgare, artemisia.

"8. Daffodil--narcissus purpurens et narcissus croceus, called so from torpor. The oleum narcissenum et unguentum is found in all hospital books, and comes down from Pliny, 2, 19: "Narcissi duogenera medici usu recipiunt." For Leprosy and cutaneous eruptions called mala scabies. This was what Canon Bethune calls les calmantes. Of this flower, I may say that eight out of ten monastic ruins in England abound with it, to such a degree that one cannot but conclude that it was set there of old, that it was cultivated for some purpose, and has reset and reproduced itself for centuries. Father Birch, S.J., confirms this in regard to Roche Abbey--de Rocca--an old Premonstratensian house, in Derbyshire, to which people come from afar to see the daffodils, which make of the purlieus of the abbey one great tapis jaune (sic.), but a carpet varied by every sort of English spring flowers.

"9. Scurvy grass--cochlearia officinalis--has long been considered, at Nicosia, Cyprus, and elsewhere, as the most effectual of all the anti-scorbutic plants. It grows in high latitudes, where scurvy is most obnoxious. Not only religious (sic.) and physicians, but sailors speak highly of it.

"10. The sedum acre--wall stone-crop. Used by nuns in Provence for ulcers and leprous eruptions. It is boiled in six pints of milk until reduced to three or four pints. For fungous flesh, it promotes discharge, and destroys both gangrenes and carbuncles. This is found in abundance on the cottage roofs about Melton Mowbray and Burton-Lazars.

"11. Celandine--chelidonium. Tintern Abbey, about Whitsuntide, is one large white tapestry of celandine. When I visited Tintern, I was struck by the lush clustering growth of this flower in 1885. An old legend says that it is so called because the swallow cures the eyes of its young of blindness by application of this herb. "Certainly," says P. Xavier, Franciscan of the Holy Land, "it makes a good lotion for the eyes of the Leper, and is often used by us in France."