if the plague have not changed his colour, and the plague be not spread; it is unclean; thou shalt burn it in the fire; it is fret inward, whether it be bare within or without.

56 And if the priest look, and, behold, the plague be somewhat dark after the washing of it; then he shall rend it out of the garment, or out of the skin, or out of the warp, or out of the woof:

57 And if it appear still in the garment, either in the warp, or in the woof, or in any thing of skin; it is a spreading plague: thou shalt burn that wherein the plague is with fire.

58 And the garment, either warp or woof, or whatsoever thing of skin it be, which thou shalt wash, if the plague be departed from them, then it shall be washed the second time, and shall be clean.

59 This is the law of the plague of leprosy in a garment of woollen or linen, either in the warp, or woof, or any thing of skins, to pronounce it clean, or to pronounce it unclean.

8 Heb. whether it be bald in the head thereof, or in the forehead thereof.

Verse 2." He shall be brought unto Aaron the priest, or unto one of his sons the priests."-This chapter forms the most ancient medical treatise in the world, and completely to illustrate it would require a rare combination of medical and oriental knowledge. Dr. John Mason Good, in whom these qualifications were eminently united, has done much to elucidate it in his 'Study of Medicine: Michaelis also has given much attention to the subjects embraced in this and the two following chapters; and to these two authorities we are indebted for the substance of a large proportion of the observations we shall make. We may here, however, preface such observations by a few remarks as to the early history of medicine. The most early subsistence of mankind was doubtless principally derived from fruits, plants, and roots; and in the course of their researches for edible products, they must have become acquainted with many, the use of which was attended with remarkable consequences. It is doubtless on the repetition of such observations that the principles of ancient medicine were founded. Thus a number of receipts, if we may so call them, were collected, and formed points of living knowledge which passed from man to his neighbour, and from father to son, without any attempt at system; and which are applied to use at hazard, without any distinct reference to the symptoms of particular diseases. There were no physicians. Men had a general knowledge of some simples, and employed them either according to their individual judgment, or the advice of their neighbours. We read, indeed, that it was the custom even among such comparatively advanced nations as the Egyptians and Babylonians, to expose the sick in public places, that those who passed by might be induced to communicate the processes or medicines which had been useful to them in similar diseases. This certainly exhibits a very primitive manner in which the art of medicine was exercised. In process of time, patients were taken to the temples, not only as places of public resort, but in the expectation of assistance from the god to whom the temple was dedicated. The temple of Serapis was particularly resorted to for this purpose by the Egyptians, and that of Esculapius by the Greeks. Thus the matter gradually came into the hands of the priests, who in most countries were the earliest physicians; and this did not arise exclusively from the influence of their sacerdotal character, but also from their being the first to qualify themselves for the service. They saw the advantage which would accrue from requiring the patient to come to the temple after his cure, that the means of cure might be duly registered in its archives. The accumulation of such cases in the course of years, enabled the priests themselves to give advice to the patients, and thus gradually to supersede the public reference to the people which had formerly prevailed. To facilitate their own labour of reference, they would analyze and classify the mass of facts in their possession, and thus it was that medicine was at last reduced into something like a practical system of which the priests were the dispensers. It was from these temple-registers that the most famous physicians of antiquity drew their facts and the principles of their knowledge. It is agreed that the Egyptian priests were the first to bring into a system the loose facts which former ages had collected; and that country was in consequence very famous in most ancient times for its medical knowledge, although in this respect it was ultimately surpassed by the Greeks. Indeed the Egyptian priests introduced regulations, which at a certain point barred the further progress of the science in Egypt. Every disease was to be cured under prescribed rules; and whoever departed from them, made himself responsible for the life of the patient. It would seem, however, that their system was not very well digested; for they apprehended that the life of man was too short to enable him to comprehend all the diseases to which the human frame is incident; and therefore every physician was obliged to direct his attention exclusively to one particular disease, for which alone he might be consulted. Hence there were doctors for the eyes, the head, the teeth, the stomach, and various other departments of disease. Physicians-as Herodotus, from whom this statement is taken, remarks-were very numerous under this system; and it may be useful to observe that the profession was not exercised by the ecclesiastics generally, but by the lowest of three orders into which the priestly caste was divided. This class (called Neocoroi) seems to have corresponded pretty nearly to the Levites among the Hebrews; and if this division subsisted at the time of the Exodus, the Mosaic law would seem to have raised the medical profession a grade higher than it had been left in Egypt; for not only the proper priests, but even the high-priest, are instructed to take cognizance of infectious diseases. Probably a

certain number of the whole priesthood gave their particular attention to medicine. It is evident that medical science had at this time been reduced to a system, from the nice discrimination of infectious disorders, and the symptoms by which they were characterized. It is true that these specifications are on divine authority; but we conceive that they merely refer to what was previously known, and are only intended to indicate precisely the particular disorder to which the respective regulations were to apply. We must not omit to direct attention to the most wise exclusion which we see in this chapter of that Egyptian principle of immutable rules which must have operated so injuriously on the improvement of the art. There is not a word said about the medical treatment of the disorders brought under our notice; all that is stated refers to the cognizance of symptoms of infectious disorders, and the sanatory precautions for the public health which may in consequence become necessary. This is all of which legislation can properly take cognizance, Curative means were perhaps employed in ancient times, although we are aware that leprous disorders were not generally considered curable by any medical treatment. But that particular remedies were not prescribed seems to us so far from being an objection, as some regard it, that we consider it an evidence of the Divine wisdom from which these laws proceeded.

3. "Leprosy."-It is currently stated by the Greek and Roman writers that the Israelites were driven out of Egypt on account of their being generally infected with leprosy. They no doubt learnt this statement from the Egyptian priests; and it has often appeared to us that all the misrepresentations concerning the Jews, traceable to that source, must have arisen after the Hebrew Scripture had been translated into Greek. Through this means the Sacred History became in some degree known to the civilized world; and this gave the priests an interest in setting up the most plausible counter-statements in their power, as to those facts in which the honour of their own country was deeply implicated. Josephus (contra Apion) distinctly attributes the origin of this and many other calumnies to the Egyptians, and refutes them by many solid reasons, to which others have been added by Michaelis, Faber, and other modern writers. The present misrepresentation is on many accounts highly plausible and ingenious-quite sufficiently so to impose upon the Greeks and Romans, but not enough so to escape detection. The things are true, separately taken; but false when stated as cause and effect. It is true that the Hebrews were driven out forcibly by night, and it is true that they were infected with leprosy; but it is not true that they were driven out forcibly on account of leprosy. They were forcibly driven out, on the spur of the moment, because an awful calamity had befallen the Egyptians for their obstinate refusal to allow them to go out peaceably, as they had urgently requested. It was very clever dishonesty in the Egyptian priests to combine these two unconnected circumstances, making one the consequence of the other. Some zealous writers have thought it necessary to deny that the Hebrews were infected with leprosy at all; but that they actually were so seems to us evident from this and the following chapters. What can be the meaning of all these minute laws and regulations, of these strict precautions to prevent the spread of contagion, unless leprosy was a very prevalent and well-known disease? But this equally proves that they were not wholly a leprous people, as their ancient calumniators alleged; for then these regulations against contagion would have been perfectly superfluous. Moses would never have enacted such severe laws against leprosy had he himself been a leper, and the leader of an army of lepers. Besides, leprosy is even to this day, after several thousand years, a common disease throughout Egypt, Syria, and Palestine; it was therefore endemic both in the country to which they were going and in that which they had left. Indeed, in the latter, it was and is so frequent and virulent, that Egypt has always been regarded as the principal seat of the leprosy; and that disorder could not be expected to be otherwise than common among a people recently come from thence; and this renders it clear that it was the Israelites who were endangered by the leprosy of the Egyptians, and not the Egyptians by that of the Israelites. This again answers the charge of their expulsion on that account; for, as Michaelis well asks, "What sovereign, not an absolute blockhead, would expel a people, consisting of 600,000 adult males, and therefore, with their wives and children, amounting to two millions and a half, on account of a disease endemic in his dominions?" The same writer thinks other causes also may have contributed to the spread of the disorder among the Hebrews. 66 "They were poor, they had been oppressed; and cutaneous diseases, and indeed almost all infectious diseases whatever, attack poor people above all others, because they cannot so well keep themselves cleanly, and at a distance from infected persons." He also considers that their having partly dwelt in the damp and marshy parts of Egypt was a circumstance favourable to the increase of leprosy; while the same,circumstance (their residence along the Nile, in the marshy district of Bucolia) put it in their power to eat fish at pleasure (see Num. xi. 5); and nothing is more effectual for aggravating and spreading cutaneous disorders than a diet entirely, or frequently, composed of fish. Dr. J. M. Good concurs generally with Michaelis in these opinions; and also dwells on their subjugated and distressed state, and the peculiar nature of their employment, as tending to produce the leprosies and other cutaneous disorders with which they seem to have been affected. In producing such results, he says, "There are no causes more active or powerful than a depressed state of body or mind, hard labour under a burning sun, the body constantly covered with the excoriating dust of brick-fields, and an impoverished diet-to all of which the Israelites were exposed whilst under the Egyptian bondage." After this it may freely be admitted that the Hebrews were, to a large extent, infected with leprosy and other cutaneous disorders; while we deny that they were expelled from Egypt on that account. Their continuance for forty years in the arid deserts of Arabia, together with the wise sanatory regulations in this and the following chapter, may have done much to diminish its prevalence among them; for although Arabia is not exempt from leprosy, its dry air is less favourable to infection than the moister atmosphere in some parts of Egypt, and even in Palestine. So much of the present subject as relates to the setting apart of the leper from common intercourse will be considered in the notes to Num. vi. 1-5. We shall at present limit our attention to the forms of the diseases mentioned; and which are so admirably discriminated, and their symptoms described, in the chapters before us.

4. "Bright spot."-Three distinct forms of leprosy are particularly described by Moses in this chapter. They are all distinguished by the name of a, bahereth, "bright spot." Two of these are distinguished as particularly alarming by the epithet, tzaraath, "venom" or "malignity." Of these two, then, bahereth lebenah, “bright white bahéreth" (the Leprosis lepriasis candida of Dr. Good), is the most virulent. The characteristics of this disease are precisely as described by Moses; being a glossy white and spreading scale upon an elevated base, encircled with a red border; the elevation is depressed in the middle, but without a change of colour. The natural black hair on the patches participates in the whiteness, and the patches themselves perpetually widen their outline. Several of these characters, separately taken, belong to other blemishes of the skin, and therefore none of them were to be taken alone, and it was only when the whole concurred that the Hebrew priest, in his capacity as physician, was to pronounce the disease a tzaraath, or malignant leprosy. The next variety is much less severe, but far more so than the common leprosy, or bohak. It is distinguished by the specific name of a, bahéreth kéha, “ dark or dusky bahéreth" (the Leprosis lepriasis nigricans of Dr. Good's nosological system). In this form of leprosy, natural hair, which is black in Palestine and Egypt, is not, as Moses repeatedly states, changed; the smooth, laminated, circular scales or patches, which cha286

racterize all the forms of leprosy, are in this modification not depressed below the general surface of the skin; and do not remain stationary at their first size, but continually enlarge their limits, and are either scattered or confluent. This leprosy was improperly named "black" by the Greeks, the spots being really dusky or livid. When its existence was determined, after a probationary separation of a week or fortnight, the person was declared unclean, and obliged to remain apart. The sort of dusky leprosy known in our own country is chiefly found among persons whose occupations are attended with much fatigue, and expose them to cold and damp, and to a precarious and improper mode of diet. But it seems doubtful whether our own leprosies can be properly identified with the more malignant leprosies of the East. The common leprosy is mentioned in the next note. We may here mention Calmet's notion as to the origin of leprosy, because we shall presently have again occasion to refer to it. He thinks it is caused by minute animalcules between the skin and the flesh, which gnaw the epidermis and cuticle, and afterwards the extremities of the nerves and the flesh, producing the symptoms to which the present chapter calls attention. (See the dissertation prefixed to his commentary on Leviticus, and his Dictionary,' Art. Leprosy.)

39. "Freckled spot."-This is distinguished from the other leprosies by the term p, bohak, which imports brightness, but in a subordinate degree, being a dull white spot. This disorder is not contagious, and did not render a person unclean, or make it necessary that he should be shut up. The Arabs call this disorder by the same name as the Hebrews, and its characters are precisely analogous to those here stated. This variety is strictly a cutaneous eruption, and rarely, if ever, affects the constitution. Forskal, in one of the notes to Niebuhr's Travels,' gives an illustration of this sort of leprosy. He says, “ May 15, 1763, I myself saw a case of bohak leprosy in a Jew at Mocha. The spots in this disease are of unequal size. They have no shining appearance, nor are they perceptibly elevated above the skin, and they do not change the colour of the hair. Their colour is an obscure white, or somewhat reddish. The rest of the skin of this patient was blacker than that of the people of the country is in general; but the spots are not so white as the skin of an European when not sun-burnt. The spots in this species of leprosy do not appear in the hands nor on the abdomen, but on the neck and face, not, however, on that part of the head where the hair grows very thick. They gradually spread, and continue sometimes only about two months, but in some cases, indeed, as long as two years, and then disappear by degrees of themselves. This disorder is neither infectious nor hereditary, nor does it occasion any inconvenience." We thus see why it was declared clean. Michaelis well remarks on this case: " That all this should be found exactly to hold at the distance of 3500 years from the time of Moses ought certainly to gain some credit for his laws even with those who will not allow them to be of Divine authority." For want of a discrimination of the different forms of the disorder similar to that which the Hebrew legislator established, in countries where leprosies are common, this uncontagious form of the disorder, equally with the others, usually separates the person afflicted with it from the common intercourse of life, and deprives society of the services he might continue to render. This fact alone would be sufficient to show the wisdom of the present regulations, under which no one could be excluded from general intercourse whose presence was not dangerous. Dr. Good says, that in England a disorder of this sort is chiefly found among persons who work among dry powdery substances, and are not sufficiently attentive to cleanliness of person. The same author numbers this among the cutaneous blemishes or blains which were watched with a suspicious eye from their tendency to terminate in malignant leprosy. There are in all eight such disorders mentioned in this chapter. We have not thought it necessary to dwell on them separately, and must refer those who desire information on the subject to the Study of Medicine,' vol. v. pp. 590-610.

40. "Bald."-In a country where leprosy is not prevalent, it may well occasion surprise that the laws on that subject should be careful to provide that bald-headed persons should not be causelessly subjected to the charge and consequent hardships of leprosy. No man in this country would be suspected of leprosy even if his head became bald in his youth. But in the East, the falling off of the hair is known to be sometimes, and, in connection with other symptoms, a strong criterion of leprosy; and as there actually is a particular kind of leprosy limited either to the fore or hind part of the head, it became necessary to provide, that if no other symptom of leprosy than mere baldness occurred, the person was not to be suspected of being a leper. Indeed the Hebrew word for baldness (p, kareach) means, etymologically, one who has boils, and therefore originally, perhaps, a leper. These regulations will be better understood from the fact, that the Orientals distinguish two sorts of baldness. The first is that which begins from the forehead, and the other that which begins behind. The Hebrew has a distinct name for each of these. By the Arabian poets also, the former is distinguished as the "noble baldness," because it generally proceeded from the wearing of a helmet; while the latter was stigmatized as "servile baldness." With this understanding, let us read the terms "bald” (p, kareach) in verse 40, and "forehead bald” (ad, gibbeach) in verse 41. (See Michaelis, vol. iii. p. 285.)

47. "The garment also that the plague of leprosy is in."-A manufacturer of woollen, linen, or leather, would be more likely than any other person to discover the precise meaning of the details in the remainder of this chapter. Michaelis, with the assistance of the principal woollen manufacturer in Hanover, threw so much light on the subject, as far as relates to woollen, as may give some general ideas on the whole subject, and furnish a clue to further inquiries as it regards linen and leather. In his German translation of the Bible, he hazarded a conjecture, which was confirmed afterwards by the manufacturer in question, who told him that a disease in woollen cloth, similar to that here described, proceeds from the use of what is called dead wool, that is, the wool of sheep that have died by disease, not by the knife. If the disease has been of short duration, such wool is not altogether useless; but in a sheep that has long been diseased, it becomes extremely bad, and loses the points. He also stated that, according to the established usage among honest manufacturers, it was unfair to manufacture dead wool into any article worn by man, because vermin are so apt to establish themselves in it, particularly when worn close to the body and warmed by it. Frauds were, however, sometimes committed with this wool, it being sold for good wool, in consequence of which the stuffs made with it not only became soon bare, but full first of little depressions, and then of holes. We see such bare spots mentioned in the text, and we thus observe how the disease, as there described, might sometimes appear in the warp, and sometimes in the woof, according as the dead wool happened to be employed in the one or in the other. The manufacturer whom Michaelis consulted expressed a wish that there were some statute inflicting a punishment upon those who either sold dead wool, or knowingly manufactured it into human clothing. The learned professor himself considers the present as such a law. He says: "Whether the dead wool will in process of time infect good wool, I do not know; but to bring into complete discredit and disuse stuffs that so soon become threadbare, and burst out in holes, and at the same time so readily shelter vermin, ...unquestionably becomes the duty of legislative policy." In a state of society in which manufactures were subject to no inspection or control, such tricks with dead wool would be more frequent than with us; while the nature of the climate; with the abundance of vermin, probably rendered the effects more mischievous; and, in such a state of things, the most effectual preventive regulation would be, as here,

not to interdict the use of dead wool, which might be evaded by the difficulty of proving that the wool was really dead, but by destroying, even in spite of the owner, any article in which the symptoms appeared, which would soon operate in making every one careful not to manufacture, either for his own use or for sale, stuffs by which such loss would be incurred. This view of the matter, which we have merely condensed from Michaelis, deserves attention. But it does not seem to obviate all the difficulties of the subject; and as clothing certainly can convey contagion, it remains open to inquire whether any contagion in clothes manifests its presence by such symptoms as those which this chapter enumerates. Dr. Mead (Medica Sacra') and other writers speak of the leprous miasmata being transmitted by clothes, but they omit to notice and account for the appearances which the infected stuffs are here said to exhibit. Calmet thinks that the clothes-leprosy, like that in man, was caused by the presence of minute insects, or worms, which gnawed the texture, and left the stains described. This idea is not incompatible with that of Michaelis, since the dead wool is favourable to the production of vermin. Although not very obviously connected with the subject, it may assist inquiry to observe, that if cotton or linen cloth be suffered to remain long in a damp situation, it assumes appearances not unlike those described by Moses, and which are not only difficult to remove by washing, but also frequently injure the texture of the cloth itself.

Heb, upon the face of the field. ♦ Heb. the daughter of her years. 5 Exod. 29. 24. Heb. for a waving.