Note 173 — PART II.

Several of the authors quoted above, divide the species Lepra into four modifications or varieties: the Lepra Leonina, Lepra Elephantia, Lepra Alopecia, and Lepra Tyria. This division, which some of them freely allow to be founded more in theory than in nature, seems to have been first proposed by Constantinus Africanus. (De Morborum Cognitione, chap. 17.) Like the fanciful fourfold subdivision of other diseases, it was made in correspondence with the Hippocratic and Galenic doctrine of the four humours. Theodoric, Arnald, Gilbert, and the other authors who, in accordance with the pathological creeds of the time, were led to adopt it, attribute each particular variety to the operation and predominance of a particular humour. John of Gaddesden has attempted, in his Rosa Anglica, to dress up different medical doctrines in rude Latin hexameters, and amongst others, he announces the doctrine in question in the five following lines:—