factor, however, can only be trifling. Vaccination is a new thing, leprosy a very old one; where there is most vaccination there is no leprosy, and where there is most leprosy there is little or no vaccination. In India 78% of the lepers are unvaccinated, and in Canton since vaccination was introduced leprosy has declined (Cantlie). On the whole we must conclude that there is still much to be learnt about the conditions which govern the prevalence of leprosy.
With regard to prevention, the isolation of patients is obviously desirable, especially in the later stages, when open sores may disseminate the bacilli; but complete segregation, which has been urged, is regarded as impracticable by those who have had most experience in leprous districts. Scrupulous cleanliness should be exercised by persons attending on lepers or brought into close contact with them. In treatment the most essential thing is general care of the health, with good food and clothing. The tendency of modern therapeutics to attach increasing importance to nutrition in various morbid states, and notably in diseases of degeneration, such as tuberculosis and affections of the nervous system, is borne out by experience in leprosy, which has affinities to both; and this suggests the application to it of modern methods for improving local as well as general nutrition by physical means. A large number of internal remedies have been tried with varying results; those most recommended are chaulmoogra oil, arsenic, salicylate of soda, salol and chlorate of potash. Vergueira uses Collargol intravenously and subcutaneously, and states that in all the cases treated there was marked improvement, and hair that had been lost grew again. Calmette’s Anterenene injected subcutaneously has been followed by good results. Deycke together with R. Bey isolated from a non-ulcerated leprous nodule a streptothrix which they call S. leproides. Its relation to the bacillus is uncertain. They found that injections of this organism had marked curative effects, due to a neutral fat which they named “Nastin.” Injections of Nastin together with Benzoyl Chloride directly act on the lepra bacilli. Some cases were unaffected by this treatment, but with others the effect was marvellous. Dr W. A. Pusey of Chicago uses applications of carbon dioxide snow with good effect. In the later stages of the disease there is a wide field for surgery, which is able to give much relief to sufferers.
Literature.—For history and geographical distribution, see Hirsch, Handbuch der historisch-geographischen Pathologie (1st ed., Erlangen, 1860, with exhaustive literature). For pathology, Virchow, Die krankhaften Geschwülste (Berlin, 1863–1867), vol. ii. For clinical histories, R. Liveing, Elephantiasis Graecorum or True Leprosy (London, 1873), ch. iv. For medieval leprosy—in Germany, Virchow, in Virchow’s Archiv, five articles, vols. xviii.-xx. (1860–1861); in the Netherlands, Israëls, in Nederl. Tijdschr. voor Geneeskunde, vol. i. (1857); in Britain, J. Y. Simpson, Edin. Med. and Surg. Journ., three articles, vols. lxvi. and lxvii. (1846–1847). Treatises on modern leprosy in particular localities: Danielssen and Boeck (Norway), Traité de la Spédalskhed, with atlas of twenty-four coloured plates (Paris, 1848); A. F. Anderson, Leprosy as met with in the Straits Settlements, coloured photographs with explanatory notes (London, 1872); H. Vandyke Carter (Bombay), On Leprosy and Elephantiasis, with coloured plates (London, 1874); Hillis, Leprosy in British Guiana, an account of West Indian leprosy, with twenty-two coloured plates (London, 1882). See also the dermatological works of Hebra, Erasmus Wilson, Bazin and Jonathan Hutchinson (also the latter’s letters to The Times of the 11th of April and the 25th of May 1903); British Medical Journal (April 1, 1908); American Journal of Dermatology (Dec. 1907); The Practitioner (February 1910). An important early work is that of P. G. Hensler, Vom abendländischen Aussatze im Mittelalter (Hamburg, 1790).
LEPSIUS, KARL RICHARD (1810–1884), German Egyptologist, was born at Naumburg-am-Saale on the 23rd of December 1810, and in 1823 was sent to the “Schulpforta” school near Naumburg, where he came under the influence of Professor Lange. In 1829 he entered the university of Leipzig, and one year later that of Göttingen, where, under the influence of Otfried Müller, he finally decided to devote himself to the archaeological side of philology. From Göttingen he proceeded to Berlin, where he graduated in 1833 as doctor with the thesis De tabulis Eugubinis. In the same year he proceeded to study in Paris, and was commissioned by the duc de Luynes to collect material from the Greek and Latin writers for his work on the weapons of the ancients. In 1834 he took the Volney prize with his Paläographie als Mittel der Sprachforschung. Befriended by Bunsen and Humboldt, Lepsius threw himself with great ardour into Egyptological studies, which, since the death of Champollion in 1832, had attracted no scholar of eminence and weight. Here Lepsius found an ample field for his powers. After four years spent in visiting the Egyptian collections of Italy, Holland and England, he returned to Germany, where Humboldt and Bunsen united their influence to make his projected visit to Egypt a scientific expedition with royal support. For three years Lepsius and his party explored the whole of the region in which monuments of ancient Egyptian and Ethiopian occupation are found, from the Sudan above Khartum to the Syrian coast. At the end of 1845 they returned home, and the results of the expedition, consisting of casts, drawings and squeezes of inscriptions and scenes, maps and plans collected with the utmost thoroughness, as well as antiquities and papyri, far surpassed expectations. In 1846 he married Elisabeth Klein, and his appointment to a professorship in Berlin University in the following August afforded him the leisure necessary for the completion of his work. In 1859 the twelve volumes of his vast Denkmäler aus Ägypten und Äthiopien were finished, supplemented later by a text prepared from the note-books of the expedition; they comprise its entire archaeological, palaeographical and historical results. In 1866 Lepsius again went to Egypt, and discovered the famous Decree of Tanis or Table of Canopus, an inscription of the same character as the Rosetta Stone, in hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek. In 1873 he was appointed keeper of the Royal Library, Berlin, which, like the Berlin Museum, owes much to his care. About ten years later he was appointed Geheimer Oberregierungsrath. He died at Berlin on the 10th of July 1884. Besides the colossal Denkmäler and other publications of texts such as the Todtenbuch der Ägypter (Book of the Dead, 1842) his other works, amongst which may be specially named his Königsbuch der Ägypter (1858) and Chronologie der Ägypter (1849), are characterized by a quality of permanence that is very remarkable in a subject of such rapid development as Egyptology. In spite of his scientific training in philology Lepsius left behind few translations of inscriptions or discussions of the meanings of words: by preference he attacked historical and archaeological problems connected with the ancient texts, the alphabet, the metrology, the names of metals and minerals, the chronology, the royal names. On the other hand one of his latest works, the Nubische Grammatik (1880), is an elaborate grammar of the then little-known Nubian language, preceded by a linguistic sketch of the African continent. Throughout his life he profited by the gift of attaching to himself the right men, whether as patrons or, like Weidenbach and Stern, as assistants. Lepsius was a fine specimen of the best type of German scholar.
See Richard Lepsius, by Georg Ebers (New York, 1887), and art. Egypt, section Exploration and Research.
LEPTINES, an Athenian orator, known as the proposer of a law that no Athenian, whether citizen or resident alien (with the sole exception of the descendants of Harmodius and Aristogeiton), should be exempt from the public charges (λειτουργίαι) for the state festivals. The object was to provide funds for the festivals and public spectacles at a time when both the treasury and the citizens generally were short of money. It was further asserted that many of the recipients of immunity were really unworthy of it. Against this law Demosthenes delivered (354 B.C.) his well-known speech Against Leptines in support of the proposal of Ctesippus that all the cases of immunity should be carefully investigated. Great stress is laid on the reputation for ingratitude and breach of faith which the abolition of immunities would bring upon the state. Besides, the law itself had been passed unconstitutionally, for an existing law confirmed these privileges, and by the constitution of Solon no law could be enacted until any existing law which it contravened had been repealed. The law was probably condemned. Nothing further is known of Leptines.
See the edition of the speech by J. E. Sandys (1890).
