Note 8 — Chapter XII · PROPHYLAXIS: OR THE MODE OF PREVENTING DISEASE.

In explanation of what is meant by this text, ‘Leprous House,’ Michaelis observes that the walls of houses are often attacked by something that corrodes and spoils them. The walls become wet and mouldy from a mural salt, and that to such a degree as, in consequence of the erosion spreading further and further, to cause the house to tumble down; the plaster also becomes damaged, and requires frequent replacing, furniture becoming spoiled, and persons being injured in their health, by sleeping near such walls. If we experience such effects in modern Europe, there is room to conclude that they were more strongly exhibited at the earlier period under notice, and in countries where the houses were but of one story and low. Taking this, therefore, for the ‘house leprosy,’ the object of the Mosaic law or ordinance is sufficiently intelligible. Besides, to this day there are certain diseases of trees in Egypt and Palestine, to which the name of leprosy is given. In Switzerland, also, they speak of cancer in buildings on the same principle, and why should we not understand the leprosy in buildings of the text as being something of a similar description? It is true that man, stone, and clothes have not the same diseases; but from some analogous circumstances, real or fanciful, the diseases of man may be, and have been, evidently from the above, applied by a figure of speech to diseases in other things.

If we believe that the house leprosy here spoken of was anything relating to the disorder of the same name in man, it will be difficult to account for the symptoms and mode of treatment; and if we suppose that the walls of the house had taken a leprous contagion from man, and were in a condition, when really infected, to transmit it to man, the very direction to remove the furniture before the entering of the priest, would lead to the contrary opinion, for removing the furniture would be calculated to propagate the leprous infection. It was the damp and unwholesome state of the house to which attention was directed.