The Leper in England: with some account of English lazar-houses Part 2

The rank and status of any one, was no guarantee against attacks from this dire disorder, with its fearful ravages. Had the victims been confined, as it is generally thought, to those who dwelt amid squalor, dirt and vice, in close and confined dens, veritable hot beds for rearing and propagating disease of every kind; we should not be surprised, but should be ent.i.tled to a.s.sume, that to such circ.u.mstances, in a very great measure might the origin be expected to be found; but, when we find, that not only was the scourge a visitant here, but, that it numbered amongst the afflicted, members of some of the most ill.u.s.trious households in this kingdom, aye, even the august monarchs themselves, the source from whence _Elephantiasis Graecorum_--the malady not being contagious--first originated must be sought for elsewhere.

First amongst our ancient and ill.u.s.trious families, we find--if he may be so cla.s.sed--the case of S. Finian, who died 675 or 695[m].

A n.o.bleman of the South of England, whose name unfortunately is not recorded, is reputed to have been miraculously cured at the tomb of S.

Cuthbert, at Durham, 1080[n].

A daughter of Manna.s.seh Bysset, a rich Wiltshire gentleman, sewer[o]

to Henry II., being a Leper, founded the Lazar House at Maiden Bradley, dedicated to the honour of the Blessed Virgin, "for poore leprous women" and gave to it her share of the town of Kidderminster, c. 1160. Manna.s.seh Bysset founded the Lazar House dedicated in honour of S. James, Doncaster, for women, c. 1160.

The celebrated Constance, d.u.c.h.ess of Brittany, who was allied to the royal families of both England and Scotland, being a grand-daughter of Malcolm III. of Scotland, and the English Princess Margaret Atheling, and also a descendant of a natural daughter of Henry I. She died of Leprosy in the year 1201[p].

In 1203 in the King's Court, a dispute was heard respecting a piece of land in Sudton, Kent, between two kinswomen--Mabel, daughter of William Fitz-Fulke, and Alicia, the widow of Warine Fitz-Fulke. Among the pleas, it was urged by Alicia, that Mabel had a brother, and that his right to the land must exclude her claim, whereupon Mabel answered that her brother was a Leper[q].

It was certified to King Edward I. in 1280, that Adam of Gangy, deceased, of the county of Northumberland, holding land of the King in chief, was unable to repair to the King's presence to do homage, being struck with the Leprosy[r].

In the reign of Richard II. c. 1380, William, son of Robert Blanchmains, being a Leper, founded the Lazar House, dedicated in honour of S. Leonard, outside the town of Leicester, to the north[s].

Richard Orange, a gentleman of n.o.ble parentage, and Mayor of Exeter in 1454, was a Leper. In spite of his great wealth he submitted himself to a residence in the Lazar House of S. Mary Magdalene in that city, where he died, and was buried in the chapel attached. A mutilated inscription still remains over the spot where he is interred[t].

Some of the Lazar Houses were specially endowed for persons above the lower ranks who happened to become affected with the disease. In 1491, Robert Pigot gave by will to the Leper House of Walsingham, in the Archdeaconry of Norwich, a house in, or near that town, for the use of two Leprous persons "of good families."

Before considering the Royal Lepers, it will not be out of place to mention the death of S. Fiacre from Leprosy, in 665. He was the reputed son of Eugenius IV., King of Scotland, and is canonised in the Roman branch of the Church Catholic[u].

Amongst Royal Lepers, the case of Adelicia or Adelais, daughter of G.o.dfrey, Duke of Louraine, and niece of Calextus II., Bishop of Rome, 1118; the second Queen of Henry I. of England, and afterwards wife of William de Albion, to whom she was tenderly attached; stands first in order of state. Being stricken with leprosy, she left him and entered a convent, where she died of the disease, 1151. This reputed instance, it is right to mention, requires confirmation. The above is mentioned by a contributor to _Notes and Queries_, 7, S. viii., 174, but no authority is given.

Baldwin IV., King of Jerusalem, a direct descendant like the Royal Plantagenets of England, from Fulk, Count of Anjou and Touraine, died of Leprosy in 1186, leaving a child nephew to succeed him; the consequence being, the loss of the Holy Land, and the triumph of Saladin after eighty-eight years of the Christian kingdom[v].

Henry III. is said to have been a Leper.

Edward the Black Prince, used to bathe in the Holy Well at Harbledon, near Canterbury, for his Leprosy, and Robert Bruce, King of Scotland, had a licence at one time from the King of England to bathe in the waters of S. Lazarus' Well on Muswell Hill, near where now stands the Alexandra Palace. The well belonged to the Order of S. John, Clerkenwell, a hospital order for Lepers. Three years before his death, he was unable to undertake the command of the army in its descent upon the northern counties of England, by reason of his Leprosy, of which he died in 1329, at the age of 55[w].

Henry IV. King of England, was a Leper without doubt[x].

Margaret of Anjou, Queen of Henry VI. of England, is reputed, like her ancestor Baldwin IV., to have died a Leper[y].

Louis the XIV., is said to have died of the disease in 1715. It is also recorded, that in order to effect a cure, recourse was had to a barbarous superst.i.tious custom, once unhappily common in Brazil, that of killing several fine healthy children, eating their hearts, livers, &c.; then washing in their blood, and annointing the body with grease made from the remains. Let us at least hope this impious and inhuman act is but "legend[z]".

SUMMARY.

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 Mediaeval 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 _agrement_; 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 (_Lazere_) par Genalhac, 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 a.s.sembly of South Carolina. It is a native of most parts of Europe and Asia, as also of j.a.pan. Plantain stands in the forefront of all the _cartels des hospitalieres_.

"2. Yellow dock--_rumex_. Alterative, tonic, astringent, detergent, and anti-s...o...b..tic. 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 gra.s.s--_cochlearia officinalis_--has long been considered, at Nicosia, Cyprus, and elsewhere, as the most effectual of all the anti-s...o...b..tic plants. It grows in high lat.i.tudes, 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.