John Wesley Hales

“ It would be a not uninteresting task—though a somewhat laborious one, as the notices of this disease are, for the most part, of a scattered and fragmentary description—to trace the gradual decline of leprosy in Europe. The great cause of its disappearance is undoubtedly the vast progress that has been made in sanitary matters. Our Europe is not the Europe of three centuries ago. The uncultivated and marshy era is past, with its humid and miasmatous atmosphere, its squalid and unwholesome dwellings. Those cachectic days are gone by for ever, and the leprosy is gone by with them. ”

“ They were disabled from suing in any action, real or personal. “It is meet,” says an old jurist, “that the right of legal action should be denied in the case of leprosy: for instance, if the plaintiff is a leper, and so unsightly as to deserve exclusion from all communion with the world: for such a disease excludes the suitor from suing.”
There can be no doubt, that, in spite of the many hospitals established for him, the leper was regarded with eyes of aversion. He was an abject and odious spectacle, and for the most part the charity of that day could not abide him in its sight. ”

“ The leper was St. Lazarus himself. During the night he made himself known, and promised the Cid a happy recompense for his charity.
We might quote many more cases in which men, in entertaining lepers, entertained angels unawares; and many more still, in which the generous deed was followed by no such dénouement, and the humble thanks of the recipient were the only acknowledgment of it. Thus, even the curse of leprosy oft-times produced a good and happy result. Some men, at least, it inspired with a generous pity, a holy charity, a divine sympathy ”

“ THE LEPER.
In every age life has two leading phases. It has its busy phase, and it is with this phase that we are most intimately acquainted. Indeed this is the only form of life which we, for the most part, care to read about, or to think of. It comprehends all the great men of history, all those active natures that in some way or other acquire a wide and sensible influence in their day and generation. ”

“ Lazarus, which, having existed at Jerusalem from an early period of the Christian era, was revived at the time of the crusades, consisted of knights devoted to the leper’s service. It is St. Lazarus who occasionally in the legends appears personally to thank those that have befriended the leper.
The number of the lazarhouses in Europe about the time of the thirteenth century, was almost beyond calculation. In our own country it was very great. Were the history of them minutely investigated, many curious facts respecting the leper’s life might be brought to light. ”

“ We cannot but admire the unflinching patience with which they bore their crosses, the unconquerable will with which they worked out the life imposed, as they believed, upon them, the unrepining resignation with which they accepted their life with all its thorns and misery. ”

“ But, before we proceed to a more particular consideration of the life and the status of the leper in the Middle Ages, it may be as well to say something of the history of his disease. Leprosy is supposed,—whether on sufficient grounds or not, we do not take upon ourselves to pronounce,—to have had its origin in Egypt. ”

“ By the Council of Lateran, in 1179, it is ordained, that “whereas numbers of people were gathered together in community, they shall be permitted to enjoy to themselves a church, a churchyard, and a priest of their own; but they must take care that this be no way injurious or prejudicial to the rights of parish churches; yet shall not the leprous or lazarhouses be compelled to pay tithes for the increase of their own proper cattle.” ”

“ Hutchinson, the historian of the county of Durham, informs us that at one period half the existing hospitals of the county were for the benefit of the lepers.
The lepers had, therefore, no ground for complaining of eleemosynary neglect. On this point Michaud aptly observes that “the spirit of devotion richly endowed lepers without doing anything for their cure. Isolation appears to have been the only curative or preservative means known for their malady.” ”

“ By helping such, great souls have put on Christ.
Mapes—the same Mapes who, in his memorable drinking-song, declares that his heart is set on “dying in a tavern”—gives us a long account of how Count Theobald devoted his life and zeal to the service of the miserable and the destitute, and of the leprous especially, “because,” says the author of the De Nugis Curialium, “as these were held most eminently despicable and most abjectly depraved, he hoped, by succouring them, to render himself especially well-pleasing in the sight of God.” ”

“ Let us hope that the great service they conferred upon starving Samaria by discovering the enemy’s flight was not unrewarded—that there was granted them some slight mitigation of the rigour with which men in their unhappy condition were treated. ”