age this name is applied to several diseases,
all, however having some symptoms in common, at least in the earlier
stages of the malady. The real leprosy is a scourge and a plague in many
oriental lands to-day. Zenos, in _Standard Bible Dict._, says: "True
leprosy, as known in modern times, is an affection characterized by the
appearance of nodules in the eye-brows, the cheeks, the nose, and the
lobes of the ears, also in the hands and feet, where the disease eats
into the joints, causing the falling off of fingers and toes. If nodules
do not appear, their place is taken by spots of blanched or discolored
skin (Mascular leprosy). Both forms are based upon a functional
degeneration of the nerves of the skin. Its cause was discovered by
Hansen in 1871 to be a specific bacillus. Defective diet, however, seems
to serve as a favorable condition for the culture of the bacillus.
Leprosy was one of the few abnormal conditions of the body which the
Levitical law declared unclean. Elaborate provision was therefore made
for testing its existence and for the purification of those who were
cured of it."

Deems, _Light of the Nations_, p. 185, summing up the conditions
incident to the advanced stages of the dread disease, writes: "The
symptoms and the effects of this disease are very loathsome. There comes
a white swelling or scab, with a change of the color of the hair on the
part from its natural hue to yellow; then the appearance of a taint
going deeper than the skin, or raw flesh appearing in the swelling. Then
it spreads and attacks the cartilaginous portions of the body. The nails
loosen and drop off, the gums are absorbed, and the teeth decay and fall
out; the breath is a stench, the nose decays; fingers, hands, feet, may
be lost, or the eyes eaten out. The human beauty has gone into
corruption, and the patient feels that he is being eaten as by a fiend,
who consumes him slowly in a long remorseless meal that will not end
until he be destroyed. He is shut out from his fellows. As they approach
he must cry, 'Unclean! unclean!' that all humanity may be warned from
his precincts. He must abandon wife and child. He must go to live with
other lepers, in disheartening view of miseries similar to his own. He
must dwell in dismantled houses or in the tombs. He is, as Trench says,
a dreadful parable of death. By the laws of Moses (Lev. 13:45; Numb.
6:9; Ezek. 24:17) he was compelled, as if he were mourning for his own
decease, to bear